Nanny and the Gardener
by The Author's Mighty Pen
Summary: Lady Mary Crawley recently hired a nanny for the three children under her care and Anna Smith was the only one to meet her exacting standards. Principle among them, Anna is English. With her family located in the American south she worries her children will lose the heritage that matters most. To help Anna, though not obvious to Lady Mary, is the gardener for the estate, John Bates
1. Southern Hospitality

WANTED: Nanny for three children. Two of them are afflicted in body but sharp in mind. The third child can be precocious and expresses high intelligence. Must bear a thorough knowledge of all basic subjects, language skills in French and German, physicality to manage the energies of three children, and good references. All those interested may apply at the address given below.

She clutched the advertisement tightly in her hand and knocked on the door. The large porch allowed the generous wind to whip by but it only managed to spread the oppressively humid heat down on her so the sweat on her skin captured more hair. As she went to address the strands now sticking stubbornly to her neck the door opened.

The woman on the other side had her hair tucked into a high knot but prickles of perspiration dotted her forehead and left a dark line around her collar. "Yes?"

"I'm Anna Smith," She took her free hand, holding it out, "I'm here about the position."

"Bit of a brave soul then?" The woman at the door took her hand gingerly, as if measuring her strength without giving any indication of her own.

"No more brave than anyone else I expect."

"She'll like that you're English." The woman nodded, "Follow me."

Anna grabbed her bag in a hurry, trailing at the woman as they entered the darkness of the house. When the doors shut the cool of the interior almost led Anna to sigh aloud but she restrained herself and managed to keep her jaw locked to avoid looking the fool as she gaped with her eyes at the splendor of the house. Even in the brief glimpses she caught of the library, the parlor, the main ballroom, and the dining room, Anna knew she could fit every house she ever lived in with space to spare in any of those rooms.

"Lady Mary insists on following the traditions of her homeland so you'll address her as 'milady' in her presence and speak with the utmost respect."

"I can manage that." They stopped at a door and the woman put her hand on the knob. "And how should I address you?"

"If she keeps you long enough for it to matter I'm Mrs. Hughes." She pushed the door open, "Milady, another answer to your advertisement, a Ms. Anna Smith."

"Oh," A reed of a woman unfolded herself from a desk and turned an relatively impassive face in Anna's direction. "I do hope you've vetted her."

"She seems within the appropriate realms of sanity, milady." Mrs. Hughes bowed out, pushing Anna toward the room. "I'll bring tea shall I?"

"I think we'd rather a nice…" Lady Mary snapped her fingers, "What are those fizzy drinks George is always going on about?"

"Sodas, milady."

"Yes, I think two of those should cool us both right down." Lady Mary turned to Anna, "Might I offer you a seat?"

"That's very generous, thank you." Anna set down her bag, keeping the advertisement and a portfolio tight in her grip.

"Generosity would be moving to a slightly more temperate clime." Lady Mary took the chair opposite the sofa where Anna perched herself on the edge. "How far've you come?"

"Whitby by way of New York, milady."

"What took you to New York?"

"I immigrated there after the war." Anna ran a finger over her portfolio, "I thought the chance of finding work would be better."

"The sweatshops were a bit much for you then?"

"New York was a bit much for me."

"Bit much for me too." Lady Mary sighed, squinting toward the large window that looked out on a sizable garden. "Bit much for them as well."

Anna twisted forward to look and noted a little girl in a wheelchair and a little boy managing crutches under the watchful eye of a nurse while another little girl ran around the yard with a stick in her hand. "Are those your children, milady? The ones you mentioned in the advertisement?"

"Yes." Lady Mary stood, moving toward the window to point at the boy. "That's George. He's my blood son and we lost his father in the Battle of the Bulge."

"I'm so sorry milady."

"You know," Lady Mary turned back to Anna, "They say it was so cold that their fingers froze and broke off. Can you imagine it?"

"Not in this heat but my sister's husband lost a leg in Italy."

"I guess we all lost something." Lady Mary pointed to the girl in the wheelchair, "That's my niece, Marigold. I'm her guardian while her mother searches the reaches of Germany for her missing father though, and I don't want to tell my sister this, I believe Mr. Gregson's already dead."

"And," Anna edged toward the window, pointing toward the last little girl. "Is she yours as well?"

"She's the daughter of my late youngest sister." Lady Mary sighed, "Death seems to follow my family wherever we go."

"If it's not too bold to say, milady, I think death follows everyone."

"Indeed, but not quite like tragedy follows me." Lady Mary took a breath, "George suffers from cerebral palsy, which runs in my family thought they didn't usually know what it was called. Marigold, from her father, inherited a muscular dystrophy that'll slowly eat away at her until her lungs can no longer help her to breathe, and Sybbie seems to be the only one not affected by generations of inbreeding."

"Inbreeding?"

"The nobility of Europe, to preserve their precious blood lines, doomed their descendants to insanity, genetic disorder, and early death." Lady Mary shrugged, "The risk of thinking you're better than everyone else is finding out you are special… just not in a way you'd like."

"They seem like fine children."

"They need someone who won't spoil them." Lady Mary faced Anna, her tone cutting Anna to the heart of the matter. "Too often people look at them and feel pity but they're not pitiful. They're strong, intelligent, and curious. I need someone to help them break away from the attachments they've formed to those things that don't matter and focus on what does."

"Education?"

"Among other things." Lady Mary wrung her hands a moment before forcing them to her side. "Further, I'm afraid they'll lose their heritage with all the American culture that inundates us here."

"How long have you been here, milady?"

"Since I sold my ancestral home to become a ladies college and boarding school." Lady Mary looked out the window, "Everyone I knew in England wanted them in an institution. It's what England demanded but I couldn't do that. I couldn't lose what little of my family I had left. Not when I'd already lost everyone else."

"So you brought them here?"

"And I need a nanny to help them remember who they are." Lady Mary noted the portfolio in Anna's hands. "I'm not interested in what you have in there. If you came all this way in this heat I'll not pretend you're not academically qualified with a good reference. You wouldn't have risked the door otherwise. What I want to know is if you can help me raise the children in my care."

Anna looked out the window, smiling at the joy on the faces of the children there. "I do believe I can milady."

"Good," The doors opened and Lady Mary smiled, "Just in time Mrs. Hughes. We're toasting Ms. Smith joining our staff here."

"Welcome to Downton Place Ms. Smith." Mrs. Hughes handed over a cold bottle, "I'm sure you'll love it here."

"I'm sure I will too."


	2. A Lovely Garden

Anna walked along, listening to the hum of the early morning and relishing the coolness of the dew that would burn away in mere hours. Her skirt rustled the grass and left water droplets dotting fabric and skin alike. Bending down to move a large branch from the path, she heard a voice and turned her head up to see who spoke.

A man with a slight limp worked over to her from the other end of the path and held out his hand. "I'll take that out of your way miss."

"It's in no one's way." Anna lifted the branch, "Just happened to fall where people might want to go."

"Then I'll put it somewhere it can do good now."

"Like a fire pile?"

"We all need to keep warm somehow." He hefted the branch, "Although, now that you mention it, this is a rather stout piece of wood. I could do something with this."

"Are you a wood carver?"

"Of a sort. I passed a lot of time with whittling and carving in the war." He wiped his hand on his jean trousers and extended it to her. "John Bates. I'm the gardener here."

"Anna Smith, the new nanny."

"Mrs. Crawley must be pleased she found herself a British nanny."

"She was rather interested in my nationality." Anna shrugged, "I find it's the least interesting part of my personality but I guess we've all got our little quirks."

"We do." He nodded, "Well, Ms. Smith, I'd best get on or I'll be sweating a horrible storm by noon when the humidity and the heat set in."

As Mr. Bates turned to walk away she called after him, "You're not from here either are you?"

"No ma'am. I'm from Ireland by way of London."

Anna hurried to catch up with him, keeping pace as they took the path from whence he had come to a grouping of outbuildings. They nestled in a grove of trees that hung strands of a wisping vine from branches that grew like tentacles from the trunks. She paused, looking up in awe at them before turning back to John.

"Would you say that's an interesting thing about you?"

"What?"

"You being Irish by way of London." Anna took a step back to avoid the trail of the branch. "There's a story there I'm sure."

"You're right about that. There is a story there and it is an interesting thing about me but, like you, it's not nearly the most interesting thing."

"Then what is your most interesting quality?"

He smiled, "I guess, if you're up for it, that'll be for you to discover for yourself."

"You'd make it a mystery?"

"All the best things in life are mysteries, ma'am."

"It's 'miss', not 'ma'am as I'm…" Anna bit back, "I'm not married."

"More shame on the men who missed the chance."

Anna snorted her own laugh, shifting through the taller grass to allow him to move the stout branch against the wall of one of the buildings that, to her eyes, was indistinguishable from the others. "They didn't think so. Most of the men I met were either looking for someone to clean their house or just share their bed for the night."

"And you weren't going to put up with either?" John took out a set of keys and unlocked the door.

"Not for them. I'd like to do both for someone who sees those are also not the only things that define me."

"As well as not being the most interesting things about you?" John winked at her and pushed the double doors back to pull the branch inside.

Anna followed him, pausing at the door and marveling at the interior. Figurines, furniture, and half-finished works covered every surface and stacked over shelves that lined the walls. Carved model planes hung from the ceiling, fumes from drying paint wafting about as the wind whipped into the stuffy shed. They swung on their strings and led Anna to investigate the other works dangling from the ceiling as evidence of the craftsman before her.

John shifted the branch toward a workbench in the rear of the building and laid it diagonally between the bench and the floor before reaching over to grab a hand axe. With three swift strokes he cut through the branch to leave two equal pieces tumbling to the floor. The sound roused Anna from her reverie and she pulled her hand back, about to touch one of the hanging planes.

John dipped down, grimacing as his right leg contorted slightly, and retrieved the pieces to place on his bench. He turned back to Anna and nodded at the room. "Even this isn't the most interesting thing about me."

"They're beautiful." Anna craned her neck back to look at all the pieces. "I remember seeing these streaking across the sky during the war."

"Where were you, when the war broke out?"

Anna did not look over at him, her whole body drawing inward. "I was on Guernsey. Traveled there for a bit of holiday and then couldn't get off in time during the evacuation." She swallowed and turned to him, "You?"

"India." He shrugged, "Had a time of it with my unit."

"Is that how you got that?" Anna pointed to his leg as John eased himself onto a stool. "Not that it's any of my business-"

"We're just making conversation." John held up a hand, smiling at her. "And I got this building a railroad in Thailand actually. There's a bridge there that is held together with nails and a bit of my blood. Enough to make it a near relative I think."

"You helped build the River Kwai Bridge?"

John nodded, "They needed me because I was an engineer who spoke Japanese well enough to understand and be understood."

"And now you're a gardener?"

"It's a simpler life, after what I lived, and I think it's a better life for me." John motioned around him, "And it gives me time to exercise my craft in a different way. A less… violent way."

"Do you…" Anna wrapped her arms over herself, "Do you get night terrors?"

"I used to but I haven't in at least a year." John stood again, coming toward the door and pulling a stick from a barrel there. "I carved these every time I had one though so you can see how many times I work up in a sweat. It was the only calming activity that helped me go back to sleep. Took over my mind and drove the nightmares away."

Anna came around the door and noted at least four barrels full of intricately carved canes. Her fingers touched over one, drawing it out enough to trace the Celtic knots interlocking over its four-foot length. "How long did they take you?"

"Depends on how nice they are." John held up the one in his hand. "A month."

"And this one?" Anna tapped hers against her open palm, "How long for this?"

"That was a year." He traced his finger along the intricate pattern. "The focus helped calm my mind."

"Too bad I've no skills like that." Anna slotted the cane back into her barrel. "My demons are a bit more… persistent."

"I heard a bit about what happened to the Islands." John leaned on his cane, escorting Anna from the shed and locking it behind him. When she frowned he tipped his head toward it. "Young Master George likes to try and sneak in there to get a look at the new toys he'll be getting on his birthday."

"Do you sell your work?"

"Most of it. I take commissions, hence the furniture in there, and I've got a partnership with a few of the shops in town. They're the ones who take the figurines and most of the toys. But a few of them I make special for the children of the house." John used the cane to even his stride and Anna could not help but notice how it kept them walking side-by-side. "They deserve something special I think."

"I do too." Anna shook her head, "I think they're driving their poor mother a bit mad."

"It's difficult for her." John conceded, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to dab at the back of his neck and then mop at his forehead. "She's taken on the care of three children, two of them not her own, and if that wasn't trial enough she's got to do it alone."

"What do you know about the family?"

"I worked for Lady Mary's father, before the war, when he was stationed in India." John's face fell, "He and I were in the same prisoner-of-war camp with the Japanese but he… he didn't make it. They took him from my division, since he didn't have the skills they needed, and forced him to the Philippines. He died in the Bataan Death March."

"I'm so sorry." Anna covered her mouth, "I heard rumors but I thought-"

"It's a reminder of how we might play at war being for gentlemen but the brutal reality is that we're all monsters."

"I don't know if that's true." Anna kicked at the grass. "I think we're all trying to find out who we are and sometimes we find out that some people decided to be monsters."

"What makes you say that?"

"I don't think there's a child on the face of the earth whose mother looked at it and said, 'I birthed a monster'."

"I'm sure that the mother of Mary Ann Cotton would disagree."

Anna stopped, "I guess there are some exceptions but I feel that people aren't monsters by nature but by choice. When given the decision to turn to the darkness because of the cruelty of the world or the cruelty of man some people succumb to it. They surrender because it's easier than fighting."

John nodded, "I did once hear a story where a priest spoke to an angel and the angel pointed to two men and asked the priest, 'Which of them do you think is more evil?' The priest replied that he had no idea for neither man ever came to him for confession. Then the angel brushed his hand over the priest's eyes and said, 'Now what do you think?' Now the priest could see that one man held a demon on his shoulders while the other struggled under the weight of seven. So the priest pointed to the second man and said, 'Him of course, for he bears seven demon spirits.' But the angel just shook his head and told the priest, 'He bears the weight of seven demons because that is how many it took to get him to submit. The other man gave in after just one'."

They stood in silence a moment before Anna spoke, "I think I met the kind of men who submitted to one demon."

"I think I've met them too." John pulled up his wrist and whistled. "I'd best get on since the beds don't weed themselves."

"I'm sorry to've kept you." Anna flustered, "I should let you get on."

"It was a pleasure to meet you Ms. Smith." John offered her his hand again, "And I hope to see more of you in the garden. I need someone to appreciate it."

"I'm sure I'll get the children out as soon as I can since they don't seem the type to enjoy the indoors."

"Master George isn't one for desks and lessons but he's sharp." John pointed toward the windows as he spoke. "Miss Marigold is very studious and she almost never goes anywhere without at least one book tucked at her side. Be aware she'll slip it into the pages of the readers you'll give her."

"And Miss Sybbie? Do you have a way for me to get around her tricks?"

"She's sincere and likes to daydream. Since she's the one who either pushes or pulls her cousins along it can be a bit… tiresome for her. She just likes to know that she's recognized since it's so easy to forget her."

"You know a lot about them."

"I've worked here a year and watched a succession of nannies that didn't understand these children come and go in a flash." John took a deep breath, "Those children need something to give them hope since Lady Mary's lost hers."

"Because of the war?"

"That and everything else. Her husband died at the Bulge, her sister's been in Germany for two years trying to recover Miss Marigold's father and refuses to believe he's dead. Miss Sybbie's father brought her here and said he would return when he settled in Boston with a cousin but he's not been back to visit in nine months. No letters, no calls, and no visits."

"That's horrible."

"Miss Sybbie's mother died in childbirth and it's difficult for her father to look at her and not see the woman he loved." John led Anna back toward the house, following a path trod by the feet going to the house from the outbuildings. "And since Lady Mary's father died in the war it left her son as the heir to the estate but it'd already been sold off as a ladies' college so there's nothing for her to do but keep a stiff upper lip."

"What of her mother?"

"She's in New York caring for her own dying mother." John craned his head back to look over the massive, white plantation style house. "Lady Mary's hanging on by a thread to keep the last vestiges of her family together and it's difficult."

"What could be worse than seeing the future of your house and realizing it'll die with you?" Anna hung her head, "It's like watching something burn and knowing there's nothing you can do to stop it."

"You never know." John let out a breath, "They're discovering new things everyday and they say the world's changing."

"It is changing but I don't know if that's always a good thing."

"All things change, Ms. Smith." John guided them along to the next tree, sounds from the house alerting them to the waking of the others. "Our duty is to learn to change with them."

"If only we had that kind of trust." Anna waved her hand toward the tree that towered over their heads. "To be as constant as this tree."

"It's no more constant than you or I and it's subject to the whims and whips of the world like we are. It's just harder to see." John rubbed a hand over the trunk. "If it could speak just imagine what it would tell us."

"A great deal I suspect." Anna paused, taking in the shade provided by the tentacle branches. "What kind of tree is this anyway? I've never seen anything like it and it both fascinates and terrifies me."

"They're called banyan trees." John reached up to flip one of the hanging tendrils. "They're all over here."

"Are they sturdy?"

"I've not built a house out of them but they'll do." John smiled as a bell rang from the kitchen. "That'll be Mrs. Patmore trying to rouse anyone daring to sleep past the clang of her stove."

"I'd best get in then and tend to the children." Anna stopped, extending her left hand to John, the one not holding his cane. "Thank you for a lovely morning, Mr. Bates. I don't think I've had a livelier discussion in some time."

"The pleasure, Ms. Smith, was all mine." He took her hand with his right, surprising her with the speed he used to change hands with his cane, and kissed it. "Though I think we've both still got a bit more to discuss."

"Do we?" Anna suppressed a shiver as John released her hand.

"Of course." He winked at her as a grin stretched over his face. "We've both yet to discover the most interesting thing about the other."

"You're right." Anna took her hand back, massaging it to keep the feel of his lips there. "I think there's quite a bit more to you than I originally thought."

"What did you originally think?"

Anna ducked her head, "That perhaps we were two broken people hoping for a fresh start somewhere far away from where our nightmares come from."

John sobered, "If you anyone to talk to, about your nightmares, just know that you're not suffering alone. My house is with those other buildings but my door is always open to you, should you need it."

"Thank you, Mr. Bates." Anna met his eyes, "I might take you up on that offer."

"I hope you do." John nodded his head toward the house, "Best get on."

"Yes, we'd best get on." Anna put her hand over his on the head of his cane and then hurried back toward the house.

Her shoes knocked against the wood of the wrap around porch and she entered the summer kitchen where a short, rotund woman was barking orders to a tiny girl who looked both lost and terrified as she carried out the instructions called over the steam and heat of the room. Anna wove between them, working into the back hallway to reach the smaller set of stairs that would take her to the second floor. There she almost collided with Mrs. Hughes, hair already tied up in a tight bun to keep it off her skin, and immediately ducked her head.

"Sorry about that Mrs. Hughes."

"It's quite alright." Mrs. Hughes frowned at Anna's hem. "Were you outside this morning Anna?"

"Just inspecting the garden. I want to be familiar with the grounds for when I take the children out."

"Then I'll assume you met our gardener, Mr. Bates."

"I did." Anna tried to school her expression. "He's a lovely man."

"Take care with him."

Anna frowned, "Any particular reason?"

"He's…" Mrs. Hughes dropped her voice, "I'm not a gossip and I don't tend to spread stories about anyone but since you're new to the house you need a bit of catching up in this."

"In what?"

"He's in the midst of a rather ugly divorce. Best to keep away because his wife is probably the worst kind of devil a person can know." Mrs. Hughes stood back, "And as a Scot, I would know all about devils."

"He's married?"

"Trying not to be if he can get his wife to sign the bloody papers." Mrs. Hughes turned toward a large grandfather clock as it chimed at them from the corner. "Oh, seven already. I need to get her ladyship up and dressed."

"And I need to get ready for the children." Anna stepped around Mrs. Hughes to get to the other staircase to reach the third floor.

"Anna," She paused, her hand on the bannister as Mrs. Hughes turned to her, "Mr. Bates is a good man and we all need good friends but I wouldn't want you to find yourself… injured in any way here."

"I'll keep that in mind, Mrs. Hughes, thank you." Anna dipped her head and hurried up the stairs as the heat in the house rose before the sun was even high in the sky.


	3. Restless Spirits

Anna bowled again and George managed to raise one of his crutches to whack the small red ball soundly toward the house. She moved quickly and caught it before he could reach the wicket. He huffed and made his way back to start.

"It's just a game George, remember that." Anna prepared to ball again, wiping sweat from her brow and noting Marigold turning another page in her book. "What's the real purpose?"

"To learn how to win with grace or lose with dignity." George arranged his crutches, "Doesn't make it any more fun."

"Life's not always fun." Anna held up the ball, "Ready again?"

He nodded and readied his crutch like a bat. "Ready."

"And-" Anna paused in the middle of her throw, distracted by a noise behind her. She turned toward it, holding a finger toward George and ensuring Marigold's concentration remained on her book. With a quick turn she located Sybbie hanging upside down from a branch near the ground.

Anna turned her gaze to the house, noting the half-finished tower on the side with workers dangling from it. But they continued as if nothing distracted them. Another pivot had her facing George again and noting Marigold lowered her book.

"Everything alright Ms. Smith?"

"I'm not sure." Anna walked a step toward Marigold, "Did you hear something, just now?"

Marigold leaned forward in her chair, scrunching her face as if to listen for something. George tottered closer to them, the damp spots at his elbows and ringing a collar around his neck darkening the material of his shirt. Even Sybbie dropped from the tree and jogged to join them. "What is it?"

"Ms. Smith thinks she heard something." Marigold gestured around her, "Something not normal."

"You know this place is haunted, yes?" Sybbie lowered her voice and Anna raised an eyebrow. "Aunt Mary's been remodeling the house, trying to get all the old parts of it fixed and mended but she's insisted there are parts of the house we shouldn't go."

"Where they're building of course." Anna offered but the three children shook their heads. "What do you mean?"

"There's a staircase she won't allow us to use. It's right next to where the lift lets off for our rooms." George lowered his voice, barely audible over the chirping buzz of the humid afternoon. "It goes 'round and 'round toward the attics but no one's allowed up there."

"No one?" Anna made a face, "Maybe there's a reason for it. Your mother is remodeling the house since it's so old."

"It's more than that." Marigold insisted but Mrs. Hughes voice called out to them, interrupting the moment enough for the little group to jump.

"Ms. Sybbie, Ms. Marigold, Master George, it's tea time."

Anna grabbed the back of Marigold's chair and pushed her toward the ramp as George and Sybbie shifted through the high grass toward the porch. George's crutches on the wood distracted Anna enough so a hand on her shoulder startled her. She jumped, putting a hand over her heart but keeping the other steady on Marigold's chair so she did not slide back down the ramp.

John held his hands up, "I apologize for startling you."

"Not your fault." Anna assured him, nodding toward the children, "They've just been telling me ghost stories."

"Ghost stories, in the afternoon." John turned a stern eye on Marigold but the girl only shrugged.

"There's an attic in this house that's haunted. It howls at night."

"Ms. Smith," John turned to her, "In the week you've been here, have you heard howling in the nighttime?"

"I can't rightly say I have." Anna maneuvered the chair inside the wide double doors, working over the thin carpets to get Marigold settled in the dayroom. "Mrs. Hughes, the children have a wild story I hope you can explain to me."

"The ghosts you mean?" Mrs. Hughes shook her head, "It's nothing but the wind moving through the old place and how it settles at night. As I've told them before."

She gave her huff of disapproval but the three children giggled in response. Anna stopped Marigold's chair at the table and lifted the flap to bring it closer to her as the short, rotund woman from the kitchen bustled into the room with her mousy assistant trailing behind her. "And how are the lords and ladies of the castle today?"

They giggled and reached for the tea and biscuits set before them. Anna pulled to the rear of the room where John waited and examined a window frame. "Handy man as well as gardener?"

"I fix things occasionally." He lowered his voice, "They mentioned you heard a noise."

"They also mentioned the house might have ghosts." Anna shrugged, "I think they're just having me on."

"It wouldn't be beyond them." John snorted, "They have had their share of nannies and governesses."

"Governesses already?"

"Lady Mary wants to make sure they're educated." John tipped his head back tilting his body to the side to look out the open doors of the dayroom. "Although…"

"What?" Anna followed his focus, noting the upper levels of the house bore his current scrutiny. "What is it?"

"It might be nothing but I don't know if they're having you on."

"How'd you mean?"

"There's…" John bit his lip, "I'd hate for you think I'm having you on if I say what I think."

"I'd hope you're not but I'm not one to go against a good joke if there's one to be had. Even if it, occasionally, is at my expense."

John motioned her into the doorway of the dayroom and pointed toward where a few workmen gathered their things to finish for the day. "They've been working on this house since Lady Mary moved there."

"Mrs. Hughes said it was in disrepair. Floors of the house were uninhabitable and Lady Mary's been keeping workers around the clock to make the place safe." Ana pointed, "Installing a lift for Master George and Miss Marigold and the ramps around the house."

"Did Mrs. Hughes mention the accidents?" Anna frowned and John sucked the inside of his cheek. "I arrived here three months after they took residence on the property."

"You said you knew Lady Mary's father." Anna folded her arms over her chest, "Is that how Lady Mary knew you?"

"She moved back to England from India before the war, with her husband, but I was in her father's service when she lived there." John smiled to himself, "It's probably why she wanted to live here. The heat reminds her of India."

"Does it remind you of India?"

"Sometimes. The smells are different and the sounds, especially at night, aren't the same but it has moments when I think I'm back in Bombay."

"I always wanted to go to India."

"Why didn't you?"

"I had neither the skills nor the money." Anna sighed, glancing over at the children as they giggled together. "Besides, if I were in India I wouldn't be here."

"Here with the workers having odd accidents since they started trying to repair this house?"

"I'm not one to shirk the necessity of struggle to attain, Mr. Bates." Anna put a hand to her chest. "You forget, I survived on Guernsey during the occupation."

"I didn't forget." John adjusted his position. "I'm sure the children also told you about the staircase they're not allowed to climb."

"I get the sneaking suspicion Miss Sybbie's tried it more than once."

"She would." John lowered his voice. "The trouble is, there's something else up there."

"Do you believe in the supernatural Mr. Bates?"

"After the war, yes." John shuddered, "The Japanese who captured us believed in the idea that there are spirits everywhere. Not good or bad spirits but just spirits. They're almost indifferent to humans except when the delicate equilibrium of the life is interrupted and they are pacified by both saint and sinner in equal measure because they don't care for the petty disagreements of man except for how it might infringe on their domain."

"I'd rather not have such an indifferent set of gods."

"It's what you're used to." John took a breath, "There was one place, when they had me working in Thailand, where I felt… There's no words for it since I can't even describe the sensation but the closest I come to is that one night I felt like someone walked over my grave. This deep, unsettled shake to my soul."

"What happened?"

"Someone had desecrated a nearby temple because he was starving. He stole some of the food to survive but I think he angered the gods there."

Anna raised her eyebrows, chewing at her lip. "I'll admit to my lack of education in the spiritual practices of those in the Far East but that… seems rather unforgiving for a starving man."

"You forget, the beliefs in that region don't hold for benevolent gods willing to sacrifice their children for the benefit of mankind in general." John paused, "Hinduism has its moments and there are tenants of Buddhism which might be considered a part of the condescension to man but most are so far above man we're of equivalent significance as ants. To them we're small and young and of no more worth than the dirt we'd clean from our fingernails."

"What's this have to do with a staircase we can't use or the possibility that we live in a haunted house?"

"What do you know about slavery in America, Ms. Smith?"

Anna shuffled, "Not much, to be honest. It wasn't a course I ever studied in school and, much like your knowledge of the Far East, I've not had the chance to really explore the history of that era. All I know is it promises to be very dark indeed."

"The more I learn about it the harder it is not to judge those who engaged in the practice." John swallowed, "But this house and its… environs, were the home and grave of many slaves."

"I could see that." Anna narrowed her eyes, "Are you telling me you believe the ghosts haunting this house are the slaves who lived and worked here?"

"I wouldn't doubt it." John gestured toward the back windows where the outbuildings were visible. "When I'm out there, alone and especially at night, I could swear I hear their songs and their voices. Those buildings were their homes and they seep into the walls themselves."

Anna turned to the window, watching the outbuildings until Sybbie spoke up from the table. "Ms. Smith, can we go back outside?"

"I'm afraid it's time for your literature lessons." Anna ignored their groans, "Thank Mrs. Patmore for tea and then we'll move to the library."

"I'd best leave you to your charges." John went for the door but Anna put a hand on his arm.

"You said there's been accidents." Anna flicked her eyes up toward the descending workmen. "Are you suggesting the spirits of those who died here are looking for some kind of peace by injuring others?"

"In my experience with spirits, they've usually got something to tell us and the only way to get us to listen is to find a way to get our attention." John shrugged, walking toward the door. "Perhaps someone's stolen the offering."

Anna furrowed her brow and went to Marigold's chair, pushing her toward the library as the steady thunk of George's crutches followed them.

* * *

 _Smoke clogged her nose as she tore through the house. Noise from screams and shouts deafened in the distant thud of cannon fire and the sharp cracks of gunfire. She took the stairs two at a time, almost tripping at the top when her long skirt caught under her feet. Only grabbing the banister in time saved her a tumble back down to where the echo of cries and shouts resounded in the open hall._

 _Crying in another room drew her attention and she tried the door. The lock fought her but she shoved with her shoulder and the weak wood splintered to allow her entrance. Tumbling inside she held her hands up as the barrel of a gun pointed in her face._

 _"It's just me ma'am."_

 _"Thank goodness. We feared they'd taken the house."_

 _"They've set it on fire instead." The woman picked herself off the floor._

 _"They're burning it?"_

 _"Yes ma'am. We've got to get you and the children out of here." She moved to the crib, lowering herself over the edge to retrieve the sleeping child and place him in the other woman's arms. "If you've got Master Reginald then I can get Master Matthew and Miss Sybil."_

 _"Are you sure Anna?"_

 _"I can manage them ma'am." Anna nodded at her. "Take the servant's stairs out the back way and hide in the outbuildings. They're ignoring them."_

 _The woman held the child to her chest and darted out the door. Anna turned to the smaller beds and put her hands to the shoulders of the children whimpering in their sleep there. "It's time to wake up."_

 _They blinked blearily at her but Anna got them to their feet. "Master Matthew on my back and Miss Sybil hold tight to my front if you please."_

 _Holding to her like monkeys, Anna put one arm behind her to settled under Matthew and the other strapping across Sybil's back to keep her tight to her chest, she followed the other's woman's path out the door. Cackles of laughter and shouts from below had the children crying but they were inaudible over the noise. Anna hurried through the halls and pushed into a tight, wrapping staircase to get out the back of the house._

 _The darkness, glowing orange from the burning sections of the house the other buildings set fire so soldiers could dance about them like pagan worshippers, hid Anna and the two children in their rush for the outbuildings. She reached the closest one and almost screamed when a shadow stepped from the blackness. A moment later she heaved a sigh of relief at the towering figure there._

 _"Mr. Higgins. Thank heavens you're here."_

 _"Are you alright?"_

 _"I'm fine but the children are frightened and Missus Mary is-"_

 _"Safe and about to be away from here as soon as the children get in her carriage with her." He lifted Matthew off Anna's back. "Follow me."_

 _They moved as quietly as they could in the dark, using the overcast shadows from the buildings and the trees to sneak to a path at the far end of the avenue. A carriage waited there, Missus Mary pacing back and forth in front of the carriage as she rocked the child in her arms. Her sigh of relief almost deafened Anna after so long in the silence and they loaded the children inside._

 _"Come on then." She went to climb inside but halted when she saw Anna and Mr. Higgins draw back. "Aren't you coming?"_

 _"We'd draw too much attention ma'am." Anna urged her on. "A woman with her three children isn't going to bring as much notice as someone who looks like they're stealing the household."_

 _"They'll not be able to hold General Sherman long. They'll take whatever they can find and that means you, Anna, and you, Mr. Higgins, if you both don't get into this carriage right now."_

 _"And you need to get away or Mr. Matthew'll always wonder if you made it out alright." Anna waved her off. "Two servants like us won't draw any attention. We'll just be more refugees trundling our way to Atlanta or the like. They'll pass us by like we're nothing and that's how we need it."_

 _"We'll be fine ma'am." Mr. Higgins assured her. "Get your little ones to safety."_

 _"Then here." Missus Mary tore something from a wad of notes she had tucked in her clothing. "This is my grandmother's address in New Jersey. We'll be headed there. If you manage to make it out, come to New Jersey and find us."_

 _"Go Missus Mary." Mr. Higgins pressed as noises came closer. "Before they realize you've got yourself away."_

 _Missus Mary climbed into the driver's seat and snapped the reins. The one horse there wailed a bit but kicked forward and drew the carriage with the three half-sleeping but still terrified children away. Anna shrank back into the shadow of a tree, Mr. Higgins at her side. His large hand engulfed hers as the shouts and shots came closer._

 _"I always wanted to see the North." She whispered and he pulled her closer._

 _"Maybe in another life."_

 _"Would I be with you there John?"_

 _"There's no place you'll go where I won't follow Anna."_

 _She lifted her head to see his eyes and then a crack of shot sounded a split second before a burst of pain erupted in her back._

* * *

Anna sat straight up, clutching at her chest and sweating through her thin nightdress and even thinner sheet. Kicking it off, the twisting strangles of the fabric holding fast to her sticky skin, Anna went to her water basin and splashed it on her face. Another run with it, the groan of the faucet setting her teeth on edge as it gurgled to life and the cooler water filtered over her hands before soaking her face.

She pushed away after a moment, toweling her face dry and forcing the window open. The slightly cooler air blew her nightgown toward her body, ventilating enough so the sensation of suffocation dissipated in a few moments. Anna hauled breath into her lungs and slumped onto the arm of the chair next to the window.

After a few minutes she listened for the gentle ticking of the clock near her bed and wrangled the small thing into the meager light from the moon to read the hands. They ticked with the shorter of the two hands near the Roman numeral for two and Anna groaned before setting it to the side. As she did her eyes caught sight of a light from one of the outbuildings.

Before she even had time to think about her actions, Anna hurried into ha dressing gown, tying it tight to her, and worked into a pair of shoes. Her quick but quiet steps took her down the back staircase that now rang as familiar but eerily foreign. The back screen door clacked in the frame but she was too far away through the grass to notice or care. In fact, her senses and her brain had not synchronized until she raised her fist to knock at the door before her.

A door she now hesitated to breach. But when her foot stepped back as if to flee in the very direction from whence she came, the door opened and John stood there. They both jumped and then laughed the nerves to a dull awkwardness.

"Mr. Bates, I'm sorry to disturb you."

"It's not a disturbance for me, Ms. Smith. Although," He peeked around, "Bit late for an evening stroll wouldn't you say?"

"I…" Anna stopped herself, shaking her head. "I wasn't thinking and I came here because I needed…"

"Someone to talk to?" John stepped to the side, leaving the doorway open for her. "If it's not to forward to invite you inside perhaps you'd rather speak in here instead of in the open."

"I need the air."

"Alright." John closed his door, joining her on the small porch. "How can I help?"

"You told me you have nightmares, from your time with the Japanese."

"If I remember correctly you've got your own nightmares."

"Yes, and I'm used to those because they're mine." Anna swallowed, "But… have you ever had nightmares that weren't yours?"

"I'm not sure I understand."

"I think the conversation this afternoon about spirits not being at rest here affected my brain because I'm… I'm feeling very unsettled." Anna took a deep breath, "There was a cemetery, where I lived on Guernsey during the occupation, and someone took to wandering it at night. They'd howl and moan as a way to disturb the Germans and the Germans took to threatening us to find out who it was but no one admitted to it. One night someone claimed they saw who it was but the person they saw had been dead for six months. Died during the only bombings the island ever saw."

"And you saw it?"

Anna shook her head, "Not me. For as much as I'm a religious person and believe in the idea of malignant spirits, I don't hold to the tradition of haunting ghosts. I think spirits can be displaced and lost but I don't think they haunt like children on All Hallows Eve."

"Then what do you think?"

"I think I woke up this early in the morning because there are spirits in this house that aren't at rest and they showed me a…" Anna cringed, "A vision."

"A vision?"

"The house was on fire and there was so much noise. Shouting and canons and gunfire. But it wasn't any gunfire I've ever heard. It was slower and more like explosions." Anna closed her eyes, trying to remember. "They mentioned soldiers and a General Sherman but none of that means anything to me."

"It does to the spirits who lived here." John let out his breath. "Georgia was routed by the Union Army, under the guide of General William Tecumseh Sherman, during the American Civil War."

"Then the spirits not at rest are…"

"Those who died during his pillage and burning of Georgia." John shook his head, "War never gets better. We just get more efficient at killing people."

"Have you had…" Anna could not find the words to finish and ducked her head. "Never mind."

"Please," He put a hand over hers. "What is it?"

"Have you had something like that?"

"No."

Anna shrugged, shaking herself. "I'm just being silly."

"No, I don't think that either."

"It's shameful because I'm being frightened by children's ghost stories."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of." John shook his head. "I've not had any spirits speak to me since I've been here as far as I can tell unless I'm considerably thicker than I thought but I've been a bit preoccupied with other things so many they decided not to waste their time on me when I've got my own problems."

"Like your divorce?" Anna murmured and dropped her jaw to move like an asphyxiating fish when she went to take back her words. "Mr. Bates I'm so sorry I-"

"It's alright." He raised a hand, "I should've told you before you had to hear it from… I'm going to guess Mrs. Hughes."

Anna nodded, "It's none of my business."

"Possibly not but since you know now it's one more thing to know about me."

Anna managed a small smile, "Still not the most interesting thing about you?"

John smiled back, "Not by a long shot." They sat in silence for a stretch until John moved. "We'd best try and get some sleep since the day'll greet us before we're ready to greet it."

"And those children aren't the most sympathetic to exhaustion." Anna got to her feet, pulling at her fingers. "I know this doesn't need to be mentioned, but if you could-"

"Your secret, whatever it is, is safe with me, Ms. Smith." John stood as well, taking her hand to kiss it. "I hope you didn't find that too forward either."

"I found it rather sweet." Anna took her hand back. "I hope you find sleep Mr. Bates."

"As I hope you do as well." He nodded at her. "Take care in the dark. The tree roots can be tricky."

"I'll mind them." Anna stepped off the porch, walking more slowly back to the house.

When she reached the servant's stairs she took them more carefully and came out on her floor. No noises from the children's rooms gave her a sigh of relief but she paused near the lift. Her eyes, sharper in the dark as they settled, stared into the darkness of the staircase and a tug near her heart had Anna's hand resting on the bannister.

She pulled it back, as if burned, and rubbed the skin as she stared up the yawning void. Shaking herself, Anna went back to her room and crawled onto her bed after leaving her dressing gown and shoes by the door. Laying there, staring at the ceiling, Anna tried to breathe normally. But the darkness of those stairs still called to her and a pain in her back blossomed and faded to a dull ache as she slipped back to sleep.


	4. Chilling Revelations

Anna pulled another book from between Marigold's primer and raised an eyebrow. The girl pouted but returned to her work as Anna paced down the three desks to where Sybbie managed to break her pencil for the fifth time before adding the cracked piece of graphite to the pile gathering at the top of the desk. Shaking her head, Anna turned to where George had his tongue between his teeth and worked carefully through the problem before him.

"Another five minutes." She pivoted toward the door when the sound of a banging echoed through the room.

Stepping to the opening, Anna cracked it and saw a man with two cases under his arms and a woman chattering incessantly next to him as they walked up the corridor. She closed the door and faced the children, still focused intently on their work. Sybbie went to stand up but Anna handed her another pencil and then pointed toward the obnoxiously large hourglass that drizzled its sand in a steady stream on her desk.

"Five minutes Miss Sybbie."

"You said that a minute ago."

"Then it's three minutes now." Anna pointed to the paper and ignored Sybbie's frown to continue watching the children.

A moment later the door slammed open and Anna jumped while all three children looked up. The man from the hallway walked in, throwing his arms wide, and caught Sybbie as she pelted from her seat to him. They embraced, Sybbie's legs flying out as the man swung her about.

Anna turned to the woman walking over to Marigold and then gaped a bit at Lady Mary as she entered the room. "Please excuse my brother-in-law and my sister. They've not seen their children for some time."

"I haven't even had an introduction." Anna caught her breath, taking the pages from the now abandoned desks. "But I completely understand."

"Apologies," The man stuck his hand toward Anna, holding Sybbie tight to him with the other. "Tom Branson, Sybbie's father."

"It's a pleasure Mr. Branson." Anna shook his hand. "Anna Smith, the tutor, governess, nanny and occasional nurse."

"They're almost too old for so many minders." The woman stepped forward, shaking Anna's hand as well. "I'm Lady Edith."

"Again, a pleasure." Anna opened her hands as if she could encompass the three students. "They're bright children and it's been a month of adventures to teach them.

"Daddy," Sybbie took her father's attention, her hand on his chin pulling him to face her. "How long are you staying?"

"That depends," He shuffled her in his grip.

"Depends on what?"

"Depends on how those cars sell in Atlanta and how soon they get here from Boston." Mr. Branson shifted to face Lady Mary. "I hope you don't mind putting me up until my business partner can join me."

"Business partner?"

"Not my cousin," Mr. Branson hurried to say. "I've moved from the garage to car sales and I need to meet with him before we think about opening a shop here."

"I'll remind you that this isn't a hotel on the Great North Road but the house always feels better when full."

"Doesn't everything?" Mr. Branson grinned, taking Sybbie toward the doors.

"Hasn't it been full with workmen?" Lady Edith pushed Marigold's chair toward the foyer, leaving Anna in the room. "It's certainly in much better condition than when I was here last."

"They're doing their best work and it should be done by the end of summer. That's what they're promising for what I'm paying them." Lady Mary put a hand to George's shoulder and kept pace with him as he moved on his crutches out of the room.

"Did they ever get to that attic?" Mr. Branson's voice echoed back and Anna paused, turning her head to better hear the conversation. "I thought one of your first maids almost tumbled into the third floor when the boards couldn't hold her weight."

"They've recommended I leave the attic to molder and then just remove it to give higher ceilings to the third floor but it'll leave the house drafty. I'm waiting until they get the rest of the house under control and then they'll clean out the attic." Lady Mary pivoted to speak to Anna, still tapping the papers in her hand. "If it's no trouble you can take the remainder of the afternoon Ms. Smith. I think we'll keep the children with us."

"It's no trouble at all." Anna swept Sybbie's graphite leavings in her hand and then the bin. "I've got a few things to keep me occupied."

"Excellent. Come George, we'll take tea with the rest of the family."

They all moved off, the comforting volume of multi-layered chatter echoing back through the house, leaving Anna alone in the study. She shuffled the papers in her hand and walked back to her desk. With only a few papers to manage she had them graded quickly and made a few notes for her lessons the next day. In that instant Anna realized she sat alone in the study but there was a discernable voice.

"Hello?" When there was no response, she continued working but a moment later she heard it again. There were no definite words, none she could make out, but the voice continued. Anna frowned, turning in her chair but saw no one in the room or anyone outside through the windows.

She was alone.

Pushing her back her chair, Anna walked the edges of the room with her ear close to the wall. Near the fireplace she felt a draft of cool air and reached out her hand to follow the stream of it. In a moment her fingers trailed along the edge of the fireplace and they caught on a lip near the mantle. Her instinctual reaction, to pull back her fingers, triggered the catch and the fireplace grated for a moment.

Anna leapt back, her hands over her mouth as the grate holding new logs shifted to the left to reveal a set of stairs leading down. A blast of cool air hit her in the face and Anna caught herself on the edge of the nearest desk, almost toppling them both. When it did not close immediately Anna managed a step forward, craning her neck to try and see into the dusky light below. She could see nothing and went to retreat but something tugged at her hand.

She slapped her hand back, noting once again that she was alone. Anna drew her hand to her chest, the cold there contrasting with the sweat beading around her collar. Another sensation pressed at her back and Anna turned a swift circle to see no one behind her. But then the sensation came with a sound. This time a voice.

 _"Anna."_

It rang in her head, finally comprehensible, and Anna put a palm to her temple. The voice was like those from her nightmares. Or her visions. The deeper timbre calling to her as if from the waiting darkness below.

 _"Anna."_

She took a step forward, almost as if something pulled her there.

"Anna?" She jumped, holding the back of her neck and her other arm wrapped over her waist. "Are you alright?"

"What?" Anna turned to the door, seeing Mrs. Hughes standing there with her forehead creased in confusion. Flickering her eyes toward the fireplace Anna noted the entrance sealed itself… if it had ever been there at all. She frowned, gaping at the mantle and then snapped back to Mrs. Hughes. "I'm fine Mrs. Hughes."

"Are you sure?"

"Just a turn." Anna shifted to hold the desk, her legs shaking under her. "I promise, I'm alright."

"Lady Mary wanted to know if you'd join them for tea."

"I'd be honored." Anna flicked her gaze toward the fireplace again. "Just give me a moment to straight things up in here and I'll be right in."

"I'll let her know."

Mrs. Hughes's brow furrowed a bit more but she said nothing, leaving the room. Anna waited until her steps faded down the hall before she allowed herself to hyperventilate. Taking air into her lungs consumed her for a few minutes until her heart stopped thundering in her chest but still beat strongly as if to reassure her she lived.

Once it calmed, Anna scowled at the fireplace. In a moment she ducked toward the fireplace. Her fingers found the catch just as before but this time she did not pull it. Instead she backed away, leaving the prickling sensation at the back of her neck behind.

By the time she reached the back parlor, the only room that opened directly onto the wrap-around porch, Anna straightened her appearance and calmed her heartbeat enough to leave her breathing steady. She smiled as she entered the room but remained standing until Lady Mary pointed to a chair.

"It'd be abysmally bad form if I made you stay standing." She handed over a cup and saucer, taking another for herself and laying a few more biscuits than was probably healthy on George's plate. "I don't suppose you've turned into an American since you've been here."

"I don't think I've been here long enough to be anything but English." Anna stirred her tea, leaving it to swirl in her cup. "Sometimes I feel very English when I still jump at the passion of the pastors here."

"They are quite something aren't they?" Mr. Branson sipped his tea but set the cup aside the moment Sybbie came to him. "What what've we got here?"

"My reader."

"Are you going to show me?"

"Of course." She climbed onto his lap and showed him the completed pages as Anna continued to stir her tea.

"Marigold's told me that you've increased their workload." Anna swiveled in her seat to focus on Lady Edith, holding Marigold's hand and stroking over the skin there. "She's had to study extra hard with you."

"I do hope that's a compliment to my methods and not a complaint." Anna tried to smile, scooting to the edge of her seat but keeping her back straight. "When I first arrived I assessed the children's skills and I felt their last tutor wasn't testing them at their level."

"I quite agree." Lady Mary sighed, her eyebrows making her long face stretch even farther to match the disdain in her voice. "They all seemed to think that a physical disability leant to a mental one. I ask you."

"It's what most thought back home." Lady Edith murmured but Lady Mary brushed the comment away.

"They're wrong and Ms. Smith here's proved that beyond the shadow of a doubt."

"But wouldn't it be easier, on you, if…"

"No." Lady Mary cut her sister off again, setting her cup with significant force on the table next to her. "They're Crawleys and no Crawley since the Reformation has ever been placed under the care of anyone but our own. I don't intend to break the tradition even if I'm in America. We're still Crawleys and we owe it to them to keep hold of our heritage."

"Perhaps it's time for a change." Lady Edith gestured about them. "Surely you're not trying to keep this all up on your own."

"And what else would I do?" She waited but her sister gave no reply. "This is what George stands to inherit and I'll be damned if he loses it to something as trivial as cerebral palsy."

Lady Mary stood, helping George to his feet, and the two of them walked out onto the porch, wrapping away from the room. Anna looked down at her cup again and then set it to the side. Her fingers smoothed over her hands a moment before she realized someone called her name.

"Sorry?"

"I wanted to know your opinion." Lady Edith brushed at Marigold's hair, fingers catching occasionally in the curls but moving slowly enough to pull them out so the hair bounced back. "Do you think it's too much for my sister?"

"I think she's doing what she believes is best for her family and there's not much more we could ask from anyone than that."

"I agree." Mr. Branson put a hand toward Lady Edith. "She's doing her best here Edith. Perhaps we should-"

"She's living a dream, Tom, and we both know it. She thinks that is she builds this place up it'll be another Downton."

"It's not bad to want another home."

"But she wants what we used to have and we'll never have that again." Lady Edith's lip trembled and her fingers squeezed around Marigold's hand. "Some things we'll never get back."

Anna stood, brushing down her dress. "Excuse me, I've intruded enough on your afternoon."

"No," Mr. Branson went to stand but Anna waved him down. "We're… We've made you feel unwelcome in the conversation."

"I think, Mr. Branson, this was never a conversation I was supposed to hear in the first place." Anna nodded at Mr. Branson and Lady Edith. "It's a pleasure meeting you both. I see where your children get their remarkable talents."

"You're too kind." Mr. Branson shook her hand and Anna turned to do the same to Lady Edith.

"I never throw away a compliment." Anna straightened her shoulders. "Please, enjoy the rest of your afternoon."

She left the parlor, moving toward the front of the house, but as she exited the front door she noted Lady Mary sitting in one of the chairs there. Her forehead creased and her eyes narrowed as she stared out at the drive. George was there, kicking a ball with his crutches and chasing after it at speed.

"To think, they'd put him in an institution. To cage all the talent and life behind stone walls." Anna went to leave but Lady Mary raised a hand. "Please don't."

"I'm intruding."

"Not at all." Lady Mary turned her head, beckoning Anna forward. "I could use the company."

Anna stopped, walking toward her chair but veering slightly to stand by one of the pillars. "Is there something you need?"

"I need a great many things but none of those are tangible items one can get from the shop or the corner store now are they?" Lady Mary pushed herself to stand, folding her arms across her chest like a stiff doll. "Do you believe I made a mistake with this house?"

"I'd be a fool to comment on my employment, milady." Anna kept her posture, noting how Lady Mary's eyes darted everywhere as if she had no desire to focus in any one place for too long. "And my professional opinion is that your son and his cousin would've wasted away in one."

"Have you ever been?" Anna frowned and Lady Mary finally met her eyes. "To an institution?"

"I can't say I've had the privilege or the misfortune."

"It's the latter, I assure you." Lady Mary walked to another pillar, her steps following into a familiar pattern of pacing. "They're run by well-meaning people but they're no better than workhouses for the poor. They're boxes where one shuts up the people they want to pretend don't exist or those they think they're too busy to care for."

"Not everyone has the money for the care their children need in some cases milady." Anna risked it but noted how Lady Mary neither scoffed nor commented. "For some their only option is to entrust the care of their children to another."

"But if one has the means, isn't it their responsibility to care for them?" Lady Mary thrust her hand toward George. "He's all…"

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before speaking again. "He's all I've left of his father and if I left him in one of those dismal, dark places what would I do? Who do I turn to when my whole family is gone?"

Anna did not answer, watching Lady Mary pace back and forth twice more before she spoke again. "My sister's always wanted an easy way out. She had Marigold out of wedlock with some newspaperman who flattered her and flirted with her and all the while had a mad wife locked away in an asylum somewhere. And she believed his promises. All of them up to the point when he promised he'd return from the war and marry her."

"I'm sure he intended to marry her." Anna offered but now Lady Mary scoffed.

"Whatever he intended it didn't matter. The war happened and suddenly my sister was pregnant with the child of a man married to someone else. Then he went missing in action and she bore his child in some London hospital in the middle of the Blitz." Lady Mary shook her head, "What a time to discover your child has muscular dystrophy. When they're trying to get the lights back on and operating on you with a penknife and no morphine."

Lady Mary took back her seat. "Fine thing of her to come here and tell me I'm doing this the wrong way when she's spent the two years anywhere but with her daughter. And my brother's not much better."

"Mr. Bates…" Anna swallowed as Lady Mary swiveled her head to look at her. "Mr. Bates said that Miss Sybbie's mother died in childbirth and so it's difficult for him to see her."

"He's not wrong there but… ten months without hide or hair of him." Lady Mary sighed, squinting into the distance again. "Good, old Mr. Bates. He's been with this family for as long as I can remember."

"He has?"

"He and my father were as close to friends as you can get when you cross classes like that." She sighed, "Even in the war he was with him as long as he could be until the Japanese put a stop to that. And when he got back, broken like the rest of us, he offered his services to me."

"And you brought him here."

"We needed one another, for whatever it is we have." Lady Mary stood again, clasping her hands before moving them over one another. "We've a long history and that's not something one should throw away when they're alone in the world."

"Milady," Anna reached out a hand, resting it delicately Lady Mary's arm for a moment before drawing back. "You're not alone, not as alone as you think."

"I guess not." She managed a smile for a moment before letting her face return to its impassive and immovable expression. "But I think we've bared our souls enough for one day. There's work to be done. George!"

Anna stepped back as Lady Mary left the porch, summoning her son as she went. It was only a moment longer, watching them, before Anna shivered. The chilling sensation ran up her spine and had all of her hairs rising.

She turned to follow it, walking back into the house. Instead of leading her to the study or the hidden entrance in the fireplace, this compulsion tugged Anna toward the stairs. Her hand rested lightly on the bannister and used it to support herself as she ascended. Each stair fell away until she reached the second-floor landing, the muffled steps over the carpet not troubling her for more than the time it took to get her to the next set of stairs.

These too fell away and Anna blinked to find herself at the base of the stairs to the attic. Her hand went to rest on the bannister but the rough wood drove her back, inspecting her hand for possible splinters. Rubbing over her hand left both feeling smooth and Anna grabbed the edges of her skirt to ascend the steps.

They creaked under her, little tremors moving through her heart with each step, but Anna found the door at the top and pushed it up. It banged on the wooden floor, sending a cloud of dust to choke her. She leaned against the wall a moment, coughing into her elbow and trying to listen over the wracking of her own attempts to clear her lungs.

When no sounds came from below she continued into the attic. For a moment Anna stayed still, noting the way the dust on the air caught the beams of light from the windows in the arched gables of the roof. She kept to the light, walking forward with her toes pressing to avoid any board that shifted or creaked too loudly. Each step took her toward the center of the room as she noted the places the boards rotted, warped, and even the gaping hole where the unsuspecting maid had apparently fallen through.

The same chill from earlier, the compelling tug to get her into the attic or down the stairs, drew her away from the light and toward a corner of the room. Anna kept her steps measured, caution and hesitation playing equal parts in her approach to a shadowed section of the attic. As she reached it something creaked and Anna jumped to the side as the board where she just stood snapped under her.

Her heart pounded in her chest and Anna put a hand there as her mind began a series of berating insults. It took a few minutes to calm her heart and then duck around the area to investigate where she stood. There, tucked into the corner, was a blackened trunk. She frowned at it and then stumbled forward as if pushed toward it and the compulsion left her unable to stop until she reached it.

Anna caught herself, her shoe almost snagging on the hole in the floor, and put her hand to the trunk. It groaned under her weight and she slid over the surface to find one of the side straps to yank it across the floor and away from the treacherous corner. With a few bumps- mostly the trunk but two of her head on the sloping ceiling- Anna managed to bring the hulking object to the middle of the floor and knelt down in front of it.

Her fingers brushed the surface, nose scrunching at the smell of damp and must mixed with a dry, burnt odor. She heaved against the lid but it stayed closed, pulling at two places where clasps kept the lid tightly locked. Using the corner of her skirt, Anna cleared away the grime to see the size of the keyhole and then craned her head around the room.

Tucked in another corner, just out of sight, she noted a crate with what appeared to be a hammer jutting from it. She edged over the floor again, her toes bearing her weight in tentative steps, and arrived where the crate sat next to a tray with an assortment of tools. A quick inventory had her sorting through them to find a chisel to go with the hammer she spied earlier.

Anna took her position in front of the trunk and then frowned. A quick shuffle over the floor put her at the back, where the hinges rusted slightly from the grime that caked them. Setting the chisel to the pin, Anna struck the end to drive the pin back. In three knocks it was clear and she repeated the process on the other one to leave the hinges clattering to the floor.

Stowing the tools to the side, Anna pushed the lid open and blinked at the contents of the trunk. Protected by the thick wood, though the scent of must permeated here as well, were stacks of letters. Each stack tied together as though sorted in a system known only to the owner of the trunk.

Anna craned her head to see inside, her nail grazing over intricately carved initials reading 'J.H.' She sat back, her fingers tapping against the box, and her teeth clacked in her jaw. After a moment she reached in and extracted all the letters from the box, using the strings to loop them over her fingers, and closed the lid of the box again.

She left it in the middle of the floor, working her careful way back to the door, and descended the ladder with her prize clutched tightly to her chest.


	5. Love Letters Lost

Anna sorted the next letter. From what she could see, there were only two distinct sets of handwriting. While the speed and the intricacy of the lettering altered occasionally, she spent enough time as a teacher to recognize the individual scripts. Each one, by date, seemed to be the response to the one before it until her timeline stretched for at least seven years.

She sat back, noting the different styles, sizes, and efforts for the letters between two individuals who only ever signed their letters 'J' or 'A'. The prickling chill from earlier forced her to confront the reality that the two specters from her 'vision' might very well be the authors of the missives before her. And part of her wondered if she dared read their letters. To reach into the souls of two people, as she was about to do, seemed the highest violation.

And yet…

"Why bother showing me a forgotten trunk in the corner of a room if I'm not supposed to know what's inside?" Her muttered words broke the heavy silence of her room, buzzing only with the sounds of insects outside her window as the humid heat of the afternoon suppressed all desire for everyone and anything to move. But move Anna did as she brushed her finger along the first letter, by far the smallest of the bunch, and slipped it from its position. "There's someone who wants me to know something and if I just stare at these then it's all gone to waste hasn't it?"

Her laugh made the letter shake in her hand, "I'm talking to an empty room now. Because you, Anna Smith, have swum to the deep end and might be taking the plunge to be as mad as a hatter." She slipped her finger to pull the folded envelop from its tucked position. "Down the rabbit hole we go."

A knock came to her door and Anna started in her seat, almost upsetting the careful chronology of the letters before her. She checked them in their positions and held the first in her hands to secure its position. "Yes?"

"Ms. Smith? Mr. Bates is asking for you. Says he's got your requested item."

Anna frowned, "My what?"

"He's got something for you. Said he picked it up for you in town since you were busy this afternoon and couldn't go yourself."

"Get what?" She muttered to herself, pushing out of her chair and hurrying to the door. Opening it, Anna forced the letter in her hand into the pocket of her skirt and blinked at Mrs. Hughes. "Did he say what he found in town?"

"Not to me. Said to meet him in the study if it was convenient since the family's still gathered in the rear parlor."

"Then I will be right there. Thank you Mrs. Hughes." Anna went to move past her but Mrs. Hughes caught her arm. "Was there something else?"

Mrs. Hughes did not immediately respond, her eyes narrowing as she studied Anna before releasing her hold. "For a moment I worried you weren't yourself."

"I'm in full possession of my faculties Mrs. Hughes, that I promise you."

"That's not what I meant."

Anna could feel her face fall from the plastered smile she used just a moment before. "What do you mean?"

"Your skin looked darker and not at all like yourself."

"Did it?"

Mrs. Hughes shook herself, releasing Anna's arm. "Must be the lighting."

"Must be." Anna nodded at her, "Excuse me, Mrs. Hughes, I'd hate to keep Mr. Bates waiting when he already went to such trouble for me this afternoon."

She hurried down the stairs, not daring to look back at Mrs. Hughes as the chill ran down her spine. Anna entered the study to see John, cane leaning on the wall, flipping through a reader. Her gaze flicked toward the fireplace and then she pulled the rolling door closed with a snap that brought John from his reverie.

"You seem in a bit of a state." His forehead creased, "Anything I can do?"

"I'm not entirely sure I'd even know where to start." Anna swallowed, casting another sidelong glance over at the fireplace. "I'm… I'm not feeling quite myself."

"Meeting new people can be disorienting."

"Can they?" Anna gave a snort, "If only it was because I met new people today."

John's frown only deepened. "I've a feeling there's something far more upsetting going on."

"I…" Anna interlaced her fingers, pulling and tugging at them before finally smoothing them over her skirt. "I know I trusted you with some delicate information that, at the time, I believed sounded quite mad."

"Your dream from the life of someone else?" John moved himself into one of the small chairs, stretching out his right leg while his fingers played over the head of his cane. "Is that a good way to describe it?"

"A very good way." Anna swallowed and pulled another chair close to him. "Because I'm getting the distinct impression it wasn't just a product of my imagination."

"A product of what, then? You've told me you don't know anything about the history of this area or its people."

"I don't." Anna reached into her pocket and withdrew the letter, setting on the desk in front of John. "This is the first of what I've discovered was seven years worth of correspondence between two people who called themselves 'J' and 'A' in their letters."

John picked it up, turning the letter over in his hand and flicking at the flap now hanging loose from the folds of the letter. "Have you read it?"

"I was about to when Mrs. Hughes told me you were waiting to give me something." Anna shrugged, "But I don't recall asking for anything from town when I didn't even know you were going."

"That was easier to explain than trying to justify why I bought this," John pulled a book from the satchel beside the chair to place next to the letter, "With no provocation."

"What is it?" Anna pulled it toward her, reading the cover and then looking at John. "Why'd you buy a local history?"

John shrugged, "How'd you find this letter?"

"I was led to it." Anna bit her lip, "You're familiar with the stairs the children aren't allowed to climb?"

"Of course."

"Have you ever been up them?"

"Me, no. But I'm sure Miss Sybbie's made her own daring attempts to get up it until Mrs. Hughes caught her escaping a nurse or a nanny or a governess." John peeked into the envelope. "What led you up there?"

"I've got the discomfiting feeling it was the same restless ghosts that wanted me to see that vision of them."

John sat back, tapping the edge of the envelope along the surface of the desk. "What happened in the vision?" Anna squirmed and John put out a hand. "I'm not having you on, please believe that."

"I trust you're not." She took a deep breath, "I'm just curious what you're hoping to discover."

"Anything." He cracked a smile. "You never did say what you saw in your dream when you mentioned it."

"Other than the burning house and the name General Sherman." Anna sat back, running her palms over her skirt as if she could dry the beading moisture there. "I was a servant, named Anna, and I rescued a Missus Mary from the house before the soldiers could get at her or her three children. I ran into a man I called John and we got the children and Missus Mary into a carriage. She wanted us to go with her but we couldn't because she needed to get away. Then there was talk about going to New Jersey."

"And then?"

"I woke up when I got shot in the back." Anna instinctively moved her hand there, the memory of phantom pain tickling there again. "I think that Anna died in the arms of her John."

"Anything else?"

"I think…" Anna frowned, "I think I was colored."

"Colored?"

"Dark skinned." Anna shook her head, "It's nothing I've ever thought about before but everything seemed the same except that."

"What about her John?"

"He was as white as you and the Missus Mary was much like Lady Mary." Anna flicked her gaze to the letter. "The sensation, from the dream, didn't leave and it's come back every night since."

"You've had these dreams for a month?"

Anna nodded and pointed at the letter. "The feeling or the presence or the sensation or the whatever you want to call the spirit or ghost of that Anna was the one who led me into the attic where I found a trunk holding that."

"And it's dozens of counterparts?" John went to pull the letter out but retracted his fingers. "It feels like prying."

"Then what does it feel like when the presence of the other John, whose initials I would swear were carved on the inside of that trunk, led me to this?" Anna got up, walking to the fireplace and pulling the catch. She watched John's reaction and noted how he jumped when the stairs revealed themselves. "She wanted me to find those letters and he wants me down there."

John stood, walking to investigate the stairs before meeting Anna's eyes again. "What do you think it is?"

"I'm not sure other than the obvious." Anna waved her hand at it. "It's a passageway."

"But why?" John held up a hand to stop Anna's response. "In old castles or manors in Europe they were escape routes but here… There's no need."

"You're saying the family that was chased from this house as it burned to the ground didn't need a secret passage?"

"They weren't in need of it until it was too late and I don't care how paranoid whomever built this house was when they built it they wouldn't have needed it." John bent his head as if to look deeper into the tunnel. "Not unless…"

He went back to the desk and pulled the book there into his hands, flipping through pages at speed until he found a page. Holding it open, he walked back to show her. "The Railroad."

"It went under a house?" Anna took the book into her hands and frowned as she read the page. "What's the _underground railroad_?"

"It was a system used to shuttle escaping slaves from the south to the north and then on to Canada." John took the book back, scanning the other pages. "The author did his research well."

"Who's the author?"

John rotated his wrist to see the cover. "A Jack Ross, local historian." Another turn had him raising his eyebrows to show Anna the picture of the author on the back cover. "No idea how given where he's trying to sell his book."

Anna matched John's expression when a smirking black man greeted her in the photograph. "He's daring."

"And protected I'd guess." John read the bio, "Want to hear something odd?"

"Odd how?"

"Coincidental." John cleared his throat, "Jack Ross was born and raised in New Jersey but has always claimed a fondness and draw to this area as both a place with great personal and historical significance."

Anna faced the passageway again, pacing in front of it before sucking her cheeks. "Do you think they want us to find him? Or for him to find us? Or…" She drove her hands to the side of her head, shaking it. "This is mad."

"It's not ours to reason why."

"I'm not finishing that quote." Anna held up a warning finger to John, "I don't intend to die in this house."

"Someone already did and they need us to find out what happened to them."

"They died, Mr. Bates, that's the end of it." Anna went to close the passage but John put a hand on hers to stop her.

"They're restless because they've been ignored. I don't think we should ignore them any longer."

"It's not our concern."

"Then whose?" John waited and then Anna dropped her hand. "We don't have to look down there long, just a peek."

Anna swallowed and shook her head. "No."

"Ms. Smith-"

"You're not going down there." Anna tapped the mantle. "I won't risk being trapped down there without someone to open this for me."

"You're going down alone?"

"I'm not taking anyone else with me." Anna took a deep breath and grabbed the corner of her skirt to descend the stairs. "No more than ten minutes, Mr. Bates. Are we clear?"

"I'll have it open again if it closes." John nodded and shuffled to the side of the mantle, fingers waiting nearing the catch. "I won't let you be trapped down there."

"I should hope not." Anna managed a small smile, "Wouldn't want you to have to explain another unexplainable thing to Mrs. Hughes."

"I've no intention of being on the wrong side of her ire."

Anna gave a little laugh to match his but if the expression on his face matched hers then both gritted their jaws to stop themselves betraying their fear. She turned down the stairs and started her descent. The clack of her shoes against the stairs gave her a steady cadence and she bent herself into the space.

The tunnel led along the line of the house, descending further and further until Anna had to put her hand on the stone wall to guide herself to the end. She blinked to try and focus her eyes through the brown-black shadows. Everything fuzzed and waved as if nothing held a definitive shape here. Reaching out, her fingers brushed wood and Anna almost jumped back in surprise. But with a stiffening of her shoulders, she pushed forward into the room.

Windows set high in the walls, possibly under the porch given the slatted nature of the light making its way into the space, offered a dusky image of the room. Anna turned herself in a circle to examine the space and then risked a closer inspection of the walls. Damp must invaded her nose and Anna scrunched her face against the invasion of mold while the steady drip of water in a corner helped her narrowly miss a puddle in the corner of the floor.

As she turned back to the door she noted the light catching on a divot there. Her fingers traced the space and followed patterns she traced daily and taught the children. There, in the wood of the door jamb, were there initials 'J.H.' and 'A.C.'

She pulled her fingers back and stumbled. Her hand shot out to catch herself but it caught a damp spot and she hit the floor hard enough to knock the breath from her. As her body tried to self-correct she knocked her head against the floor and her vision darkened.

* * *

 _She hurried down the passage, the flickering light of her candle giving the stone an eerie light that almost seemed to reflect the shadows of all those disapproving eyes. Those who saw them speak on the plantation. Those who saw them walk close in the streets. And those who would drag them both from this place if they knew what either of them intended to do here._

 _But she continued to the door and rapped her knuckles quickly on the wood. The eternity it took for him to open the door was too great and she barely set the candle on the little table near the door before throwing her arms around him. He wrapped her tightly in his embrace, holding her close as his other arm closed the door._

 _They held close for a moment before she finally separated from his hold. "You came."_

 _"Of course I did."_

 _"I feared you'd change your mind."_

 _"How could I do anything else but be here with you?" His thumbs brushed over her cheekbones, eyes never leaving his adoration of her face. "I'm madly in love with you Anna."_

 _"I love you too." She leaned up and captured his lips in the moment of his surprise._

 _It only took another moment for him to pull back, the grin stretching his face to split it from ear to ear. "There's time enough for that Anna."_

 _"There's no time John." Her hands took their turn mapping his face. "If anyone knew we were down here…"_

 _"It'll be fine." He covered her hands with his, "No one will know."_

 _Anna covered his mouth with her hand. "If you keep saying things like that they will. The spirits hear you when you tempt fate like that."_

 _"I don't believe in spirits." John smiled at her, tugging her toward a bed in the corner. "I believe in a God that desires His children love one another."_

 _"He also counseled against adultery." Anna paused, their fingers slipping a bit on one another as if reality might split them apart. "You're still married John."_

 _"To a woman who holds no love for me." John took a breath, "Would the God you believe in desire that you live your life in misery because you made a mistake you've no way to rectify now?"_

 _Anna traced his fingers, following them to his cuffs as she pulled the buttons apart. She did not meet his eyes until she had opened his shirt and left his suspenders hanging from his trousers. "No. I believe in a God who desires that we love and are loved in return."_

 _"So do I." John ghosted his hand over her face before holding along the line of her jaw. "I love you, Anna Cotton, and only you."_

 _"And I love you John Higgins."_

 _All their movements matched one another for intensity and delicacy after that. Her dress and stockings piled on the floor near his trousers and shirt. His undershirt caught about his head and they stifled their laughter for a moment before meeting again to kiss until Anna's vision dotted with black spots. Her corset thumped to the ground and then her chemise drifted into the pile followed by his pants._

 _With only the flicking light of their candles to guide her, Anna ran her hands over his skin. It almost glowed in the little light available to them while hers disappeared into the shadows. He caught her hands, kissing both of her palms, and waited until she raised her eyes to meet his._

 _"You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." Their lips met and he guided her to the bed. She laid back and he covered her body with his own, laying to her side while one of his legs moved between hers. "Trust me."_

 _"I can't do anything else."_

 _Anna leaned into his kiss, her fingers holding at the back of his neck to work her fingers into his hair. She clutched there when his fingers skated over her body to caress and adore at her breasts. Soon her fingers dug into his scalp as his mouth lowered there and he traced over her skin with his tongue and teeth. When she writhed against him, grinding the hottest part of herself on the leg slotted between hers, John's fingers journeyed there._

 _Fires in her blood coursed all the faster when his fingers glided through her folds. Anna cried out, trying to quiet herself as he slipped a finger inside her to stretch and stroke through her walls. As he added another finger, his thumb pressing where all the nerves of her body seemed to join and spark together, Anna called out his name before the wave of pleasure surrounded her._

 _It was nothing compared to the pleasure of him entering her for the first time. The scratch of her nails of his arms and shoulders only seemed to serve as a spur to move him faster, deeper, and harder against her until the climax of sensation struck her again. She gasped out, his name a repetitive series of sounds murmured like a prayer, and he followed soon after._

 _His head rested on her shoulder, holding himself close to her until he slipped away. He wrapped an arm around her and Anna shifted to look him in the eye. She brushed a lock of hair from his forehead and smiled at the satisfied expression on his face._

 _"Well," She pushed his hair back to fully kiss the skin of his forehead. "Mr. Higgins, you've had your way with me."_

 _His face dropped the smile and his hand came to her cheek. "That's not-"_

 _"I'm just teasing, John." Anna soothed, continuing to card her fingers through his hair. "I know what I mean to you and I don't believe this was anything but the deepest expression of your affection for me."_

 _"Then know this." John kissed her forehead, both of her cheeks, and then her lips until they needed air. "I'm who I was meant to be with you. I didn't know who that was before you."_

 _"Me either." Anna sighed, her fingers now acting on instinct as she pushed through his hair. "Though there's no telling what people'll think of you if they know what you did."_

 _"I fell in love with someone."_

 _"You fell in love with the black nurse for the children of the house." Anna shook her head, "They'll think you-"_

 _"We've gone over that enough, you and I." John stopped her, lifting himself above her to run his fingers over her skin. "For tonight, can we just let this be enough for us?"_

 _"Will there ever be more?"_

 _"I hope so." John motioned to the room about them. "We work for people willing to flout the law to save slaves. We found one another. There has to be more when this is what we've already got."_

 _Anna giggled, pulling John back down to her side. "Do you never doubt?"_

 _"No." He took his turn to brush the hair back from her face. "But I don't doubt the sun'll rise in the east either."_

 _"Then I won't doubt you." Anna snuggled closer to him. "I love you John."_

 _"I love you Anna."_

* * *

"Anna? Anna!"

Anna opened her eyes, focusing on the shape bent over her. The torch shifted and almost blinded her, Anna covering her eyes with her hand while the other tried to bat the torch away. "What?"

"Are you alright?"

She tried to sit up, her palm pressing on her forehead as John's hand helped her stand. Leaning on him, she frowned at the room again and tried to remember what happened. A pivot had her eyes watering and the pain shooting through her skull.

"Anna?"

"I think I hit my head." Anna cracked her eyes open, pointing a shaking finger toward the corner. "There were people over there."

"There's no one down here but us."

"Not now." Anna insisted, meeting John's gaze. "I'm talking about the other Anna and John. They were down here."

"Was she trying to get away?"

"No they hid down here because…" Anna coughed past her dry mouth. "They were together."

"Together?"

"Together like…"

"Oh." John nodded, a shiver passing through him. "I guess they-"

"We need to read those letters." Anna went for the door, catching herself there with a clutching hand on the jamb.

"Perhaps a bit more slowly." John came to her side, taking her hand to help her forward.

Before she left, Anna's fingers trailed over the carved initials there. The only trace left of what happened there so long ago. Anna blinked and, for a moment, she thought she saw the shadow of Anna Cotton moving through the corridor with her but when she blinked the woman was gone.


	6. Cries for Help

Anna opened another letter, scanning the contents before making a note on the pad next to her. Folding it, she tucked it back into its envelope and sorted it into the right box before going to select another. A knock at her door had her looking up and a smile crossed her face to see John there.

"What a pleasant surprise." She gestured to the seat before her. "The children are off with their parents on a trip to the lake so I've got the afternoon."

"I hear they've given you a lot of afternoons since Mr. Branson and Lady Edith decided to come for a visit." John took a seat, noting the boxes. "What've you got there?"

"I'm sorting the letters for information." Anna tapped one box. "This one is filled with those where they talked about mundane things. I think they were both trying to improve their reading and writing skills because the spelling and grammar dramatically improve as they move along."

"How'd they improve it?"

"Practice." Anna sighed, setting down her pen. "I think they started reading together and then writing to one another as a way to get better."

"Why were they improving their reading and writing?"

Anna sighed, "From what I've… gathered about them, Anna Cotton was the children's nurse with little to no formal education. She could barely read and write when she wrote the first letter and he was not much better. A hired laborer who proved his skills with work but not with the pen."

"Then how'd they learn?"

"I think the mistress of the house at the time took a bit of pity on them and allowed the maid, at least, to sit in on the lessons since a few of her first letters look more like practice lines from a primer." Anna pulled one out to show John. "John Higgins's responses suggest he had rudimentary skills he then cultivated during their interactions."

"That's not the kind of romance one reads about normally." John read through the letter quickly and then returned it. "Partners who fell in love through study and a mutual desire for greater education."

"There's nothing more romantic than the written word, Mr. Bates, or else poetry wouldn't exit." Anna shrugged, "And maybe it's not what we might consider romantic after the horrors we've all lived through but it seemed to be what they needed. Someone to rely on when they were at a vulnerable stage."

"Nothing more vulnerable than admitting you're imperfect."

"Exactly."

They sat in silence a moment until John cleared his throat and pointed to the other boxes. "What about these?"

Anna tapped another box, "This one is where they start to express feelings for one another. The kinds of feelings a man with a wife back in Ireland shouldn't have for another woman."

"The kind of feelings a black woman shouldn't have had for a white man either I'm guessing."

"You'd be right in that assumption."

"They took a big risk even admitting they felt anything at all for one another."

"Exactly." Anna flipped through another set, tapping them against her desk. "But that's not what's been bothering me most."

"What's bothering your more than the shirking of convention and the flouting of laws on multiple levels of eternal repercussion?"

She swept her hands over the letters before her. "How'd they all get to the same place?"

"If he kept his and he kept hers then…"

"Then why were they in the same place?" Anna pointed to them, "If he kept hers and she kept his then they would've been half the conversation and in two different places. They're secret hideaways, as it were."

"Maybe they kept them in the same place. A kind of secret location for safer exchanges so no one would see them handing one another letters in broad daylight where they could get caught and punished."

"But the house was burned to the ground. Any place they might've hidden them would've been burned as well and yet I found these, untouched, in a blackened trunk in the attic." Anna shook her head, "Who collected the letters, put them in order, and then stored them away?"

John sucked the inside of his cheek, "We've been under the assumption this house only has two ghosts. What if they're not the only spirits in this house that want this mystery solved."

"What mystery? She died when the Union soldiers burned the house down and… Well, I actually have no idea what happened to him but he's definitely dead now." Anna leaned back in her chair, "This whole thing is a tragedy playing out before my eyes."

"What about that room in the basement?" John shrugged as Anna frowned at him. "What if they hid their letters together there so no one would find them?"

"In the trunk?"

"And then, someone renovates the house and stacks all the items in the attic." John thumbed his fingers over the letters. "It's a possibility."

"Rings about as true as anything else." Anna chewed on her lip, "But if they found the passage then why not put it in the plans for the house?"

"I'm not following."

"I don't think Lady Mary has any idea there's a secret tunnel from this room that leads under the house. And since she's been focusing all of her renovations on the upper levels of the house because the foundation's not damaged, that suggests whomever sold her the house didn't know either."

"Then the ghosts wanted you to find the passage."

"The ghosts who also moved the letters and the trunk to the top of the house?" Anna raised an eyebrow, "Pardon my unrestrained skepticism about all of this but ghosts or spirits or souls or whatever you want to call them don't usually take up the habit of heavy lifting. They're incorporeal and therefore can't do more than disturb things in the natural world. Flutter the page of a book or send a whisper of wind past your ear, that sort of thing. Not haul a trunk to an attic and make sure to drop chronologically sorted letters into it so someone can find it years later."

"You're thinking far too much about this."

"And perhaps you're taking it a bit too much on faith." Anna stopped herself, closing her eyes to take a breath. "I've seen too much in my life, Mr. Bates, to believe that these coincidences are all working out for us because we're the first people to listen to some troubled spirits."

"Not me. Everything I've seen just tells me there are more of them out there than we realize." John paused, "What if we're not the first to have encountered these spirits?"

Anna narrowed her eyes, "Now you've gone from suggesting we're particularly special to saying we're not special at all."

"Not that we're not special but that we're in the right place at the right time because others have also been in the right place at the right time. A series of seemingly unrelated incidents to put us on the cusp of helping these ghosts move on to the next stage of their existence."

"Heaven?"

"If they believe in that version of the afterlife, sure." John waved his hands as if to bat away clutter from the air between them. "My point is, time might move differently to those who occupy a dimension where the body isn't an issue."

"They still live on this plane, in a way." Anna sat back in her chair, folding her hands on her lap. "They've been here for a hundred years Mr. Bates, or close enough to it. If they're still wandering here then they're trapped and it doesn't matter if they've not got bodies or anything to ground them here. They're lost and they need to move on."

"That's what we're here to do."

"How? By reading their private thoughts and watching their tragic love story play out before our eyes to the point where I feel the shot deeper and deeper in my back every night?" Anna let all the breath leave her body. "I'm a very religious person Mr. Bates and I believe, with all of my soul, that there's a reason they're spirits are trapped but I don't think I'm the person to help free them."

"We might be the only people who can." John stopped, reaching over her desk to pull the copy of the book by Jack Ross toward him. "Maybe he knows."

"Knows what?"

"Knows if there were others who claimed to know anything about being haunted in this house."

"I thought we already said it wasn't a haunting."

"In my experience, people who live in houses possessed by ghosts, whether malignant or not, are haunted." John flipped through the index of the book and then found something that sent him to another set of pages. "He's got a sort segment here on the implication that there's been spiritual activity in the area."

"We're near the border with Louisiana and there's more than enough spiritual energy there to bleed over in our direction." Anna propped her head on her fist, elbow on the arm of her chair. "Most of those stories, even if we're being generous, are false."

"But even a blind squirrel finds a nut and Mr. Ross has done us the distinct pleasure of weeding out the folklore myths to give us the most believable stories." John put the open book on the last of the letters to sort. "What do you make of this?"

Anna leaned forward to read the details on the page.

 _Beginning just after the end of the Civil War, once General Sherman's troop had finished their war of violent attrition in the area, few of the plantations stood as they once did. Of the few that survived, Sun Meadow stands prominent among them. Though a burned husk, the bones of the house avoided most of the fire damage inflicted on the structure and stood through a tornado that swept through the area in late 1866. A tornado that, it is rumored, was sent to protect the house from carpetbaggers and squatters intent on the property._

 _The original owners, the Grantham family, fled to New Jersey and suffered significant persecution under the accusations of being Georgian plantation owners. They never argued against the matter and endured physical assault and public defamation until a group of escaped salves, recently returned from Canada, attributed their escape to the Grantham family. It was later discovered, from others along the infamous and noble Underground Railroad, that the Grantham family had been a crucial location on the way to the north because of their many secret passages and expert hiding places that went unnoticed due to their significant position in the community._

 _All evidence of the Grantham family's involvement in the Underground Railroad was thought lost to all but supposition and first-hand accounts until the turn of the century when, by what seemed another twist of spiritual protection, one of the secret hideaways was found. Stashed inside were the quilts used as signals for escaped slaves, the coded communications between other abolitionists in the area and more organized groups to the north, and a list of names taken down to record who made it to the house and further beyond to help attempt reunification with lost family members._

 _Other supernatural events surrounding the house seem to revolve around its defense and protection fro looters who claim to hear the spirits call out warnings to stay away, those who have attempted to buy the property but felt unwelcome by the presence of the house itself, and even attempted renovations that might disrupt the original structure that stands as much a pillar of justice and moral rightness as any structure recognized along the line of a railroad very could even find._

Anna looked up, "What's Sun Meadow?"

"This house and the surrounding land were once part of a plantation called Sun Meadow." John shrugged, "It's been parceled out so Lady Mary only owns a fraction of the original plantation but she owns over seventy percent of it and has, with a bit of help from me, been buying the rest of the land to restore the property."

"Why?"

"The Granthams are her family, on her mother's side." John gave a little laugh. "They relocated to New Jersey and never moved back. They kept hold of the property but when the Depression struck they had to sell off parts of it to keep themselves afloat."

"Oh." Anna stroked her finger along the page. "This seems to suggest the house is defended by these spirits."

"Why not?"

Anna shrugged, her eyes trying to communicate the madness she felt was obvious in the suggestion. "That suggests this house is… hallowed ground or something."

"This house bears significance for those who've gone before."

"And they're defending it for what? For the salvation of two spirits?"

"Maybe those two spirits are just the two who've spoken to you." John sighed, "I live in the outbuildings Ms. Smith. There've been nights when the insomnia is bad and I wander the grounds that I think I smell food being cooked or that I hear songs or maybe the gentle tones of conversation. Places that have held this much life are hard to ignore."

Anna studied him, her fingers running over one another. "And you believe those spirits are restless too?"

"Maybe they have been in the past. The same spirits that drove away squatters and those who'd destroy the house could be the same ones who gather here as a focal point." John went on to explain. "If they're lost then perhaps they need a place to gather. This place, with all the history and tragedy and good intentions locked in its very bones, would be the perfect place. A place to try and find the path to the next life."

She bit the insides of her cheeks and then took a deep breath. "I want to speak to Mr. Ross."

John laughed, "I don't think it's as simple as that."

"It'll have to be because I want to read the other accounts he used for this." She jabbed her finger at the book. "The way he talks about it he's read some things that convinced him there are spirits here."

John puffed out his cheeks and then nodded. "I might know someone who could tell us how to contact him."

"Who?"

"I'm sure if the Lady Mary invited the noted local historian, Jack Ross, to study the old plantation house at Sun Meadow he'd find it hard to refuse." John pushed himself to stand and shook his head when Anna tried to hand him back the book. "You might enjoy reading the rest of it. Maybe even to your students."

"They're not going to find local history too fascinating when we just finished discussing the invasion of William the Conqueror in England."

"1066, what a year." John put a firm hand on his cane and teethed his lip before speaking again. "When I found you in the passageway, you mentioned that Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins had been down there."

Anna did not meet John's eyes, going back to sorting the letters. "That's right."

"What did you see?"

She stopped and then raised her eyes to meet his, "A very private moment I felt bad to have intruded on."

John nodded and then twitched one of his shoulders. "What if they wanted you to see it?"

"Who wants someone else to see them when they're in a moment of passion?" Anna shivered, "I hate that term."

"It's not a wonderful one, that's for sure." John chuckled, "But I know-"

"No, I don't think you do." Anna stopped herself, "That was rude, I apologize."

"It's nothing."

"But it's not." Anna stood in a hurry, walking away from the desk and everything it represented about a life that wasn't hers and yet leaked onto her own as if it wished to usurp her. "I saw a private moment between two people who shouldn't have loved one another. Two people who could never be together. Two people who would be separated by more than just their circumstances but also by death. They loved one another, risked everything from their reputations to a lynching to have that moment among the few they could scrounge for themselves, and yet they still lost each other. They couldn't…"

Anna pressed her palm to her forehead, scrunching her eyes closed against the emotions tearing through her to try and find the ones that were, without a doubt, hers and hers alone. "It's… It's too much for me to handle, Mr. Bates, and I don't want to bear the burden of their story."

He put a gentle hand over hers, drawing it away from her face and holding it until Anna opened her eyes to look at him. "It's not easy, Ms. Smith, but they wouldn't have chosen you if they thought you weren't equal to the task."

"I don't feel equal to it."

"But you could be the conduit for two lost spirits to find one another and then move forward." John covered her hand so both of his hands wrapped hers. "It may not help to think of it this way, but there is honor in being chosen for something like this."

"I didn't ask for this."

"They didn't ask for it either." John met her eyes. "There's something about you, Anna Smith, that makes you the perfect person to help settle their eternal affairs."

"What makes me perfect?"

"You're compassionate, passionate, and inquisitive. Anyone else would've ruled it children's stories, ignored the prompts, and felt nothing for people they've never met. But you took this story into yourself. You made it yours, in a way, and because of that you're the reason their story will be told. You'll help them find the peace they need." John released her hands. "If I were a ghost I'd be honored to find someone as lovely as you to help me. A lady like yourself to save my lost soul."

"I'm not a lady and I don't pretend to be."

"You're a lady to me, Ms. Smith, and I've never met a finer one." John nodded at her, "I'm off to prevail upon Lady Mary for a way to meet a local historian, if you care to join me."

Anna took a breath and shook her head, "I feel there's more for me to do here, with these letters."

John smiled, nodding. "Then best of luck to you Ms. Smith."

She waited for him to leave the room and then settled down at her desk again, pulling the next letter toward her to scan the contents before sorting it into the appropriate box. When she ran out of letters Anna sat back, the five boxes organized before her and tempting her, as if with voices, to start reading the story before her. As she contemplated them a noise drew her from her moment. A moment she hid in the bottom drawer of her desk with the book by Jack Ross.

Anna left the study, pushing into the foyer but she heard nothing and saw no one. Distant scuffles from the kitchen rang out as something fell and a quick reprimand ensued. A creak of an upstairs floorboard allowed Anna to track the progress of someone higher in the house while the steady thump of tools on the house told her the workmen had yet to finish for the day. But none of them were the noise that pulled her from her desk.

With a hand on the door, to return to her archival work, Anna shivered as if a line of cold water went down her back. She turned and jumped back hard enough to jar the door when she came face-to-face with the woman she recognized as Anna Cotton. The woman who appeared before her in the passageway under the house and in her vision.

The woman who now put a hand forward as if to place it over Anna's mouth.

"Please don't call out. Someone'll hear you and I can't appear to them the way I can to you. They'll think you're mad."

"Aren't I?" Anna whispered, keeping her voice down as her eyes darted along the hallway as if searching for someone else to help her understand the specter before her. "I'm seeing visions. I'm seeing you."

"Because I need you to see me." The Anna before her pulled at her fingers in a motion Anna just stopped herself copying. "I need your help."

"Why me?"

"Because you're a lot like me." Anna Cotton smiled, "Appearances aside."

"How are we alike?"

"Temperament, behavior, attitude, and perspective." Anna Cotton gave a little laugh. "It's why we were friends."

"We've never met." Anna paused, "This moment aside, of course."

"We met a long time ago." Anna shook her head but Ms. Cotton continued. "In the life before this one we were friends. Kindred spirits, as it were."

"And now you're using me to get to the life after this one?"

"That's the end goal but there's more before that can happen."

"What else is there?"

Anna Cotton extended her hand to Anna, "So much more, if you're willing to help me put this all to rest."

Anna studied the hand before her and then tried to put her own there. To her surprise it rested on something solid for a moment before falling through. But as it fell through so did Anna and she could not stop the half gasp, half sob as she saw herself in the house as it had been a hundred years ago.

"I need to tell you a story, Anna May Smith, so you can tell me the ending."


	7. Unsettled Affairs

Ms. Cotton led Anna through the halls, Anna trying to keep herself moving without losing her balance as her head moved in more directions at once than her neck could reasonably handle. But when she almost ran into someone they passed through her like smoke and Anna cried out in surprise. Ms. Cotton only laughed.

"We're specters here, like I am in your time. This is a land made up of my memories and so there's nothing here you can touch or harm. It's the safest way to show you everything."

"Is it?"

Ms. Cotton cringed, "Well, since it's my memory it's imperfect and it could mean you don't get the whole story but you'll get enough and I've got a feeling you'll fill in the gaps as you need to on your own."

"Will I?"

"You've an inquisitive mind, Anna. I've no doubt you're up for the task. It's why you're here."

"Not sure I'm comfortable with how this has all turned out."

"Then we're in the same boat, as the saying goes." She went to move forward and Anna reached out, actually connecting with her arm.

The motion stunned them both and Anna released quickly. "Sorry."

"No it's…" Ms. Cotton ran her fingers over the spot on her arm. "It's been so long since I was touched."

"Like when Mr. Higgins touched you?" Anna cringed, "You showed that to me, yes?"

"I did." Ms. Cotton took a breath, "I'm sorry about putting you in that position but I needed you to understand."

"Understand what?"

"Why it matters." Ms. Cotton waved a hand, "What you see is my life. I can move to any moment of it, watch it pass over me again and again but each time I watch it I'm alone. I relive it alone and I must bear this place alone."

"Where's Mr. Higgins?"

"Here, somewhere." Ms. Cotton gave a sad smile. "It's as if we're both on opposite sides of a glass. Not allowed to meet or touch or love or…"

"Like you were in life."

"We could break the rules of convention there. Here it's a different kind of law. One higher than us." Ms. Cotton nodded toward the hall, "This way."

Anna followed her through the corridors toward the back kitchens. She still dodged the workers there, as if they were real, and shuddered when they passed through her. Ms. Cotton peeked back and gave a little smile.

"You get used to it."

"Is this," Anna caught up to her as they walked through the closed back door, "What it's like for you all the time?"

"Yes." Ms. Cotton sighed, "I've gone a hundred years with the touch of another person until you. It's a very lonely existence."

"But you see people all the time. You see me." Anna put her hands to her chest, as if needing to reassure herself she was still tangible.

"It's not the same thing. What I see is like looking through a window. I can't touch it, I barely smell it, and when I try to taste it the sensation is like a whisper on my tongue." Ms. Cotton shook her head, "That's no way to live."

"Are you alive?"

"No, I've been dead for a hundred years." Ms. Cotton waited on the back porch. "I am a ghost."

"Then why haven't you moved on?" Anna rubbed a hand subconsciously at her back, realizing as she did that Ms. Cotton copied the motion. "If you died that night then…"

"Died in his arms, you mean?" Ms. Cotton managed a smile that pulled at Anna's heart with all the sorrow there. "Because I haven't finished my work."

"And what is that?"

"He needs to be freed to. I won't move on without him."

"Does he wander here too?"

"Sometimes." Ms. Cotton pointed, "There I come."

Anna turned and watched Ms. Cotton, carrying a single bag, make her way toward the back door. She took a moment to admire the house before stepping onto the porch. As she did so the worn sole of her shoe caught and almost tripped her. Her hand flew out to grab the steps but someone else stopped her fall.

"Thank you." She turned and Anna looked into the face of the man from her dreams. Ms. Cotton hopped to the side, removing her shoe to inspect the damage and struggled not to meet the face of Mr. Higgins. "My shoe's seen better days."

"Haven't we all?" He extended a hand but Ms. Cotton did not take it. "I'm John Higgins."

"I'm Anna Cotton sir and I'm sorry but I can't shake your hand."

He frowned, inspecting his hand for a moment and then smiling. "There's nothing wrong with it, I assure you."

"I'm sure your hands are good for the work you do but I can't take your hand. It'd not be right… given our positions in this household."

Mr. Higgins folded his fingers back into his palm and took his arm back slowly. "Positions in this house?"

"I assume you're someone of some importance to this house." Ms. Cotton pointed up at it. "From what I heard from my former… employer, the Grantham family don't hire just anyone to operate as their foreman."

"And I'm sure you wouldn't be here if you weren't someone of some significance to them as well."

"I'm just the best woman for delivering the next Grantham baby." Ms. Cotton held her bag close to her body. "Now, I'd best get on inside and I'm sure you've got other things to occupy your time that aren't me."

"None as pretty as yourself."

Ms. Cotton brought a hand up to her collar and pulled it tight to her neck. "I'm not here to be flattered, Mr. Higgins. I'm here as Mrs. Grantham's new nurse and as kind as you believe your compliments are to me they're not necessary and I'd prefer if you kept them to yourself. Good day Mr. Higgins."

She took the stairs to the door, one of her feet still bare as her broken shoe dangled from her other hand. Anna watched as she knocked on the door and gave her greeting to the woman who answered before both went into the house and left Mr. Higgins still standing at the bottom of the porch stairs. With a confused expression he scratched at the back of his head before walking back toward the outbuildings on the property.

"I didn't know what he would mean to me then." Anna turned back to the Ms. Cotton that stood beside her. "I thought he was just like my old master."

Anna frowned, "You'll have to forgive me, I don't understand what you're saying. What do you mean, 'master'?"

"How much do you know about slavery in the United States Ms. Smith?"

"Not much. I know it started a war and that it started in Britain. Otherwise I'm rather ignorant of the details."

"They're not all necessary." Ms. Cotton led her around the porch, painted with a slightly different color than in Anna's day and bearing a finer trim. "All you need know is that I was born and raised on a plantation just south of Savannah. They called it Golden River and thought themselves kind folks. Comparatively I guess they were since they tried not to split up families but when you're the person that others think of as chattel it's difficult to find redeeming qualities about the people who think it's their God given right to own you and work you until you die."

"But they didn't?"

"No, the family sold me to another man who owned a plantation called Greenland." Ms. Cotton shuddered, "I had the misfortune to think my change in station from picker to house servant meant I was moving up in the world."

"I'm sorry?" Anna shook her head, "I don't understand the difference."

"I went from working the fields that people like Mr. Higgins oversee to working in the house." Ms. Cotton shrugged and shoulder and pointed Anna's focus toward the dirt avenue leading up to the front of the house as a cloud of dust gathered around an approaching buggy. "In the culture that raised me, that was moving up in the world. There was only one step better than that but it was a dream and we knew it wouldn't come for us."

"What was that?"

"Freedom." Ms. Cotton sighed, "Every slave dreams of being free and some of them even manage to steal it for themselves."

"But not you?"

"I never had to." Ms. Cotton pointed to the house, a smile passing for a moment over her face. "The Grantham family bought me from Mr. Green and brought me here. They freed me and then asked that I stay and work for them."

"Doing what?"

Ms. Cotton smiled, "As a conductor on the Railroad of course."

Anna gaped at her and then lost focus as Mr. Higgins approached the buggy to help the woman and the man inside it from their seats. The woman immediately pulled off her gloves and used them to fan herself as the man thanked Mr. Higgins. "You didn't have to be the ones to greet us John."

"It's a pleasure to be the first to welcome Mr. and Mrs. Grantham all the way from New Jersey."

"It was a long way." The woman put a hand on Mr. Higgins's. "Can you do me a kindness and see if there's water colder than the inferno out here?"

"I'll see what the kitchen has." He turned to leave and Anna focused on Ms. Cotton again.

"You're not even here. How can you show this to me?"

"Because it's what I've pieced together from the snippets of memories that float around this place." Her hand brushed over the wood of one of the porch supports. "Did you know that places can have memories? Souls they keep to themselves and only allow you to see if you ask them nicely."

"And you've been asking for a long time?"

"I've been begging for a hundred years." Ms. Cotton motioned with her hand. "And here's where I came in."

The Ms. Cotton of the time, now one step behind the 'Missus Mary' from Anna's dream, came back into view. Missus Mary descended the steps to greet Mr. and Mrs. Grantham. Ms. Cotton blinked and turned toward them but shook her head a moment later and greeted Mr. and Mrs. Grantham as they entered the house with downcast eyes and a bowed head.

Anna watched her follow the company into the house before facing her ghostly companion. "Did she see us?"

"I was always very sensitive to the impressions of the spirit world pressing on our own but I never saw anything." Ms. Cotton led them to follow the group inside, keeping to the sides of the corridor to avoid anyone walking through them. "And these are my memories, not the actual moment. We can't travel through time."

"Isn't that exactly what we're doing?" Anna pressed her fingers to her temples, "We're traveling through your memories and you're not convinced this isn't travel through time?"

"For me it's just showing you myself. We're just passengers on a trip here."

"I'm intruding. As much here as down in that…" Anna paused, teeth grinding. "Why did you rebuff Mr. Higgins at first if you eventually…"

"Went to bed with him?"

"Yes." Anna took a deep breath, "Why does any of this matter to me?"

"Because you can be the bridge between us Anna." Ms. Cotton put her hands on Anna's arms and held her steady so their eyes met. "I can't reach him from whatever kind of prison I occupy. I wander the house, watching flashes of times past and occasionally connecting with the people who live in this house but I need you. I need you to help me find him so we can move on together."

"And why would he talk to me?" Anna snorted, "Did we know one another before too?"

Ms. Cotton straightened, "He'll talk to you because he's been trying to speak to his great-grandson but because his grandson's haunted by ghosts of his own he can't get through." She sighed, the same flicker of sadness invading her eyes. "The past weighs just as heavily on him as it did on my John."

"What?" Anna broke Ms. Cotton's hold, backing up and pointing at her. "What are you saying?"

"My John was married, just as your John is."

"He's not mine."

"But he is your friend and that gives you a hold on someone that you never lose." Ms. Cotton's lips twitched back to the smile she reserved for John. "I didn't."

"Your John was married and he still risked everything when he slept with you." Anna shook her head, "My friend wouldn't do that to me."

"He did it because I didn't want to be parted from him any longer." Ms. Cotton closed her eyes, "I wanted something of him to take with me when he went back to Ireland."

"He left you?"

"He had to. It was the condition his wife set for the divorce he wanted from her." Ms. Cotton's voice caught and she wiped at her eyes, though only the shadows of tears fell. "But he never had it. Once General Sherman burned everything and I…"

"Died?"

Ms. Cotton nodded, "He had nothing left for him here. He couldn't stay and had to return home to his wife. A wife who bore him a daughter. A daughter he raised when his wife left him for another man." Ms. Cotton's voice hardened, "That ungrateful woman had no idea the treasure she had in him."

"Many of us don't realize-"

"But she should have. Should have seen the look in his eyes when he held his daughter, when he raised her and…" Ms. Cotton stopped, biting her lip to stop the tremble there. "I kept him company until he died but he never came. I never found him in Ireland and so I went back to Sun Meadow. I came here and I could feel him again but it was like-"

"You were on opposite sides of the glass." Anna folded her arms over her chest. "What happened to his daughter?"

"She had a daughter of her own who married an English man and they had a son. When her husband died she moved to London so her boy could gain an education. He served in the Army and accepted a posting in Singapore. A post that led him the demons and ghosts that occupy his soul." Ms. Cotton put a hand to her chest, "My heart weeps for him. Weeps for the man who lost so much of himself and now lives a life so much like my John. Like the great-grandfather his mother named him after."

Anna paced the corridor, arms still folded, and drummed her fingers in beat with her paces before turning back to face Ms. Cotton. "And you think I can find Mr. Higgins so he can find you?"

"How do you think you found that place under the house? He's the one who showed it to me."

"Did he work the Railroad?"

Ms. Cotton smiled, a deep and sincere expression of joy Anna wished could remain on her face more. "He was the conductor before I came. They thought I might allow for more people to trust me since I knew more people and me talking with other blacks wouldn't be as odd."

"Wasn't he the foreman?"

"All those who worked the Grantham plantations were paid for their labors. They just didn't say so because it helped the illusion. Each and every one of them worked for the Grantham family because they were good people." Ms. Cotton walked to the room where her past self and the others seemed frozen in place. "That's why I came here. Because they were good people."

"And to escape your Mr. Green?"

Ms. Cotton's fingers tightened on the doorframe . "He wasn't ever mine."

"I'm sorry I didn't mean-"

"You don't know anything about the kind of relationships masters have with their slaves do you?" Ms. Cotton advanced on Anna a step and Anna almost tripped in her attempt to escape. "They think of us as lesser beings, as people who don't matter because we're not people, but they'll take us to their beds or behind their houses and do with us what they will because they can. We're property to them. It didn't matter that we lived, breathed, laughed, or loved because we were nothing but their toys to use when they saw fit and abuse when they wanted. Whip or rape it was all the same to them."

Anna only swallowed and nodded, Ms. Cotton's hand moving to her shoulder to rub there. "He was only 'mine' in the sense he was my master. Master until the Granthams paid the price he set for me. And his parting gift when I left his house were the stripes on my back to go with the pain he left everywhere else."

"Then why do you stay here?" Anna finally managed, "Even if you're trying to reach your Mr. Higgins and you want to live your eternal life with him why not just move on and hope someone helps him move forward as well? Why not just go?"

"Because he won't go until he knows I'm there. That's what he promised." Ms. Cotton put a hand to her back and Anna mimicked her motions, the echo of pain as real as if it was her injury as well. "He said there was nowhere I could go that he wouldn't follow."

"Then go and I can find a way to tell him to follow."

"It's different for him now." Ms. Cotton led them into the room, the study where Anna instructed students. "He's not the man he was then."

Anna watched the family show her the secret cellar and Ms. Cotton's surprise when Mr. Higgins demonstrated the tunnel that led to the outbuildings. They followed it and he led them out into the fields where Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins hid in Anna's dream. A dream that slowly took over until Anna watched, again, as Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins helped Missus Mary and the children escape.

In that moment, when the shot sounded, Anna and Ms. Cotton flinched to watch Mr. Higgins catch her in his arms and fall to the ground. He held there, keeping the trembling body of Ms. Cotton close to him as soldiers shouted in the dark, and dragged them toward the opening Anna now knew was there. They retreated down the tunnel, his arms around her as she struggled to breathe and the stain on her clothing soaked darker and darker.

Anna put a hand over her mouth as she watched Mr. Higgins help Ms. Cotton onto the bed and pressed a blanket to the wound as if he could stem the bleeding or stop the twitching of her body. His fingers covered hers and he leaned in as she whispered to him. But to Anna the words were clear as the Ms. Cotton beside spoke them for herself.

"I told him he needed to go to New Jersey. Needed to see the truth for himself about the trip I took there. I begged him to go because I needed him to know. I needed him to be happy until I could see him again." Ms. Cotton wiped at another tear as her body stilled in his grasp. "I needed him to have hope when I told him I loved him for the last time."

"Did he?"

"No." Ms. Cotton's lip trembled. "He never went. He sent his notice and left."

"To Ireland?" Anna asked but only got a nod in return. To the fading sounds of Mr. Higgins's tears, Anna spoke in a softer voice. "What was in New Jersey that he needed to see?"

"His future, if he wanted it." Ms. Cotton huffed out a breath, staring at the ceiling. "Our son was there."

"You had a son?"

Ms. Cotton nodded. "Missus Mary knew I was pregnant and she guessed who the father was. She knew that any child of ours wouldn't be free and insisted to her husband she needed to go and see her mother in New Jersey. He was born four months later and we stayed for two months after that until she couldn't justify the trip any longer."

"You left your child there?"

"He was free there. If I had him here he would've been perceived as a slave, even if I was free. And since he was half white he'd spend his whole life an outcast of both sides. Besides, John was married and if anyone knew then it could ruin the both of us." Ms. Cotton shook her head, "I visited as often as I could, with Missus Mary, and I was going to tell John. That's why I wanted us to go to New Jersey. I wanted to introduce him to his son but instead I lost the chance."

"What about your child?"

"He grew up to be a fine man. Raised his own family and served his country. His son followed in his example, as did his grandson, and his great-grandson. All of them are my prides and joys." Ms. Cotton watched the image around them fade until they stood back outside the study in the house Anna recognized. "I just wish John knew about them."

"What difference would it make but to bring him pain?"

"It might make him realize that we were whole, in our way." Ms. Cotton put a hand on Anna's shoulder. "And that, through you, we might be again."

"I don't know how I can help you."

"Help your John and you'll help mine."

"How?"

"Through you we can find the salvation we seek." Her hand slipped through Anna as her image began to fade. "Help me write a better ending to this story, please."

Anna rested back against the door, breathing hard and staring at the space Ms. Cotton just left. A noise at the end of the hall had her jump and then hurry up the stairs and into her stifling hot room. Despite that, she shut the door and sat on the end of her bed to put her head in her hands and sob.


	8. Freeing Confessions

Anna marked the paper and put it aside, her fingers brushing over something that made her stop. She noticed the letter on her desk and only opened a drawer to shove it inside before she continued to mark another sheet. This one too, when she finished marking it, went to the pile. The motion drew her attention to the letter on her desk. The letter that, as she checked, was no longer in her drawer.

She stood up in a rush, pushing back from the table to stare at the letter in a script she recognized. Her fingers quivered but she tightened them into a fist and shook her head. "I won't do it. It's none of my business."

"What's none of your business?"

Anna looked up, her hand moving so quickly it blotted the page she was marking. She hissed at it, taking a scrap of paper to try and soak up the extra ink, and shook her head as Lady Mary entered. "Sorry, I was just talking to myself."

"I do that occasionally." Lady Mary perched on the edge of the desk. "It's not something I brag about to anyone but there are times when I'm the best company I can find."

"Must be nice to have Lady Edith and Mr. Branson back then." Anna turned to her, crumpling the paper scrap and throwing it to the wastepaper basket with a smile. But it faded at the expression on Lady Mary's face. "I assume it's not gotten better since the first conversation I heard."

"No, it hasn't." Lady Mary folded her arms, tucking them tightly to her chest. "It's difficult to watch how Sybbie and Marigold are with them and realize it'll be me drying their tears when their parents inevitably leave them again."

"There's enough room in the house for them to stay."

"There are too many ghosts here for them."

Anna's hand slipped on the desk and she only just recovered as Lady Mary raised an eyebrow. "Ghosts?"

"They carry them around. Tom's got the memory of Sybil staring at him every time he faces Sybbie and Edith's always going to hold out hope that Mr. Gregson is alive somewhere when he's probably nothing but bones now." Lady Mary shook her head, pushing off the desk to walk to the windows. "You can't be there for children when you're not there for yourself. They won't accept reality and it's painful to watch as they struggle against the tide."

"The same tide you fought when Matthew died?" Anna prayed fervently she could sink into the background as Lady Edith and Mr. Branson entered the room. "I do seem to recall you couldn't hold George for four months after Matthew died."

"But I did hold him didn't I? I got him the crutches he needed, the caretakers he needed, the medications… I pulled myself from my funk and I cared for the child left to me. The child who needed me."

"But you're not caring for them Mary." Tom stepped forward, putting a hand out to Lady Mary and then pointing to Anna. "She cares for them and Mrs. Hughes cares for them."

"There many different kinds of caring, Tom." Lady Mary shook her head at him, "You have to know that."

"We're just saying that perhaps the burden is more than you can bear."

"You can talk." Lady Mary almost spat at Edith. 'You left Marigold here for two years to chase the ghost of your lover in Germany and what did you find? Could you even sift through all that rubble to recover anything? Was it worth your efforts?"

"I had to try Mary. He's her father."

"And he's dead, Edith. The sooner you accept that the sooner you can heal and be here for your daughter who, may I remind you, is all that's left of him."

"I'm aware of that." Lady Edith stiffened, her large brown eyes edging with tears. "Don't you think I know what she represents to me?"

"Then perhaps you should show her what she means to you instead of forcing her to leave it all up to her imagination." Lady Mary paused for a breath, "You do realize her condition's not improving don't you?"

"Mary that's not-"

"I do hope you're not about to use the word 'fair' in a sentence Tom when you've not been back to see Sybbie in ten months."

"I've been busy." Mr. Branson shifted his weight, failing to meet the scouring glare in Lady Mary's eyes. "It's been more difficult than I thought."

"You missed your daughter's birthday, Tom, and for what? A car show with your friend?" Lady Mary shrugged her shoulders, "And where is he by the way? Wasn't he supposed to come and tell you all about your rousing successes?"

"He'll be here by dinner."

"Which you've said for the last two weeks." Lady Mary shook her head, the edge of contempt in her expression enough to force Anna into a corner as a spectator of the judgment. "Don't either of you dare to lecture me or my staff about how we're raising the children you left in my care since I'm the only one who seems to give a damn about them at all."

"We give a damn. We've been-"

"Like hell you do." Lady Mary cut Lady Edith off and cowed any rebuttal Mr. Branson might've managed so both hung their heads in shame. "Until such time as either of you claims more than a passing interest in your children, or manage to grow a spine and decide to take responsibility for their care, I'll continue as I have. They're my blood, after all, and I've done my best by them. Should you disagree then you'll have to fight me for them and I warn you, I'll fight back harder until you either you give up or you pull custody from my cold, dead fingers."

She left the room and slammed the door behind her. Anna pulled at her fingers, caught in the aftermath of a conversation she wanted to scrub from her mind. Lady Edith and Mr. Branson turned to one another, only vaguely marking Anna's presence before they retreated as well.

Anna turned to the contents of her desk, the letters just out of sight calling to her. For a moment she wondered if reading them would be less invasive than the conversation she just witnessed. But the creaking of a chair and the clack of crutches on wood drew her attention to the door.

"Ms. Smith? Could you help me?"

"Of course." Anna came around her desk to help Miss Sybbie steer Miss Marigold's chair to the open spot in the corner of the room. The open window provided a bit of a breeze but the room still held the stifling fug of a humid afternoon. They settled in the space, Anna getting into her chair as Master George set his crutches to the side and Miss Sybbie dragged a chair toward them. "How can I help you three? I would've thought you'd be with your parents."

"They're busy discussing our futures." Miss Sybbie put her elbows on her knees, legs twitching back and forth as they swung off the edge of the chair. "Does that mean we might not be together anymore?"

"I don't know." Anna shook her head, leaning toward Miss Sybbie. "Whatever they do decide, it'll be for the best."

"You're sure?" Master George drew Anna's attention and she nodded.

"Your parents are interested only in your welfare. And while you've all been very lucky to grow up together, not everyone can spend their whole life in the same place."

"Did you?" Miss Sybbie pressed and Anna returned her attention to her.

"My sister and I were separated when I was twelve because I had to go work." Anna shrugged, "It's what you do when you have to."

"So they might split us up?" Miss Marigold's voice wavered and Anna put her hand over the girl's much smaller one.

"If they think it's for the best then perhaps they might."

"Is it because of George and I?"

Anna paused, looking over the three children. "I won't lie to you. Your conditions require specialized care and your parents are worried for you."

"I knew it." Miss Marigold hung her head. "I knew the problem was that I'm not well."

"It's not that." Anna persisted but Miss Marigold shook her head, curls bouncing in time with the beginnings of tears on her face. "It's that your mother's… she's suffering and she needs something to give her a solid foundation when she's not sure of herself."

"It'd be better if I was well, like Sybbie." Miss Marigold sniffed, wiping at her eyes as Anna helped to dab away tears with a handkerchief. "I always wanted to be the fairest of them all."

"There's more to being fair than just being beautiful." Anna wiped away Miss Marigold's tears, gently adjusting the girl's face to meet hers. "One can be fair of face and not fair of heart."

"But no one can see your heart." Master George argued and Anna shifted in her chair to face him.

"Do you really believe that?" She pursed her lips, clicking her tongue at him. "I thought I'd taught you better than that Master George."

"You say our heart comes through as we act." Miss Sybbie sat straighter in her chair and Anna nodded at her.

"Exactly." She looked over the three children before her. "Did you know the people who used to live in this house had riches, the way the world judges, but the greatest riches they gathered were the lives they saved?"

"What?" Master George turned to his cousins, but both shook their heads. "What lives were saved?"

"The Grantham family used to live here and they saved slaves fleeing the South for a better life in the North." Anna glanced toward the boxes of letters. "They sacrificed a lot. They could've lost a lot of friends if anyone knew, and they lost many of them after the war. More to the point, if anyone caught them, they would've been arrested and lost everything. But they risked it because what mattered more was doing the right thing."

"What does it mean?" Miss Sybbie rocked forward on her chair and Anna caught it before she toppled over.

"It means that they knew it didn't matter if they were the fairest or the richest or the best. They were doing the right thing and that is always the best." Anna tipped her head toward the door, "And I think your parents need you."

"Yes they do." Mrs. Hughes entered the room, taking the handles of Miss Marigold's chair and turning it as Miss Sybbie jumped from her chair and Master George grabbed his crutches. "They'll be taking tea out in the gazebo and wanted the children there."

"Should I come as well?" Anna rose, helping return the chairs to the desks but Mrs. Hughes shook her head.

"I've got them." She paused at the door, Miss Sybbie and Master George dashing ahead. "Although there's a man in the foyer who ways he's here to meet with you."

Anna frowned, following Mrs. Hughes from the room and turning into the corridor to reach the foyer. There a man with exceedingly dark skin held a hat. His fingers drummed over it, as if playing a tune in his head, and he kept his head tipped back to take in the artistry of the foyer.

"Excuse me?" Anna approached, putting out a hand to get the man's attention as he turned on his heel to face her. "I'm Anna Smith and Mrs. Hughes said-"

"It's a pleasure to meet you Ms. Smith." He stuck his hand forward and barely waited a minute to shake hers enthusiastically. "I'm Jack Ross and I'm honored to tour your home."

"Oh," Anna shook her head, laughing a bit to try and dispel the rise of nerves. "It's not my home. I just work here."

"In my experience, if you live somewhere then it's your home as well."

"Not in mine." Anna clapped her hands together. "I'm so pleased you could come."

"I couldn't refuse an invitation from Lady Mary." Mr. Ross motioned to the foyer. "Especially since it's a chance for me to finally see inside the Sun Meadow mansion."

"You've never been inside?"

"Oh no." He shook his head. "It's always been privately owned by the Grantham family and they're very particular about allowing people on the premises given all the accidents."

"Accidents?"

"Injured workmen, the maid who almost fell through the attic, and a few other mishaps." He waved a hand as if to bat down the fear. "Small things really but enough to make it a potential liability for people to just wander the premises."

"But now that Lady Mary's refurbishing it then it's safe?"

"She invited me and I hoped to take up every part of her offer." Mr. Ross winked and then withdrew the letter, handing it over to Anna. "She mentioned you."

"Did she?" Anna read over it, handing it back with a little smile. "That's kind of her."

"She said you'd been studying the history of the area and might benefit from giving me a tour as she'd be busy. Also seemed to think we could gain some knowledge from one another."

"I think she's seen me reading your book." Anna cringed and guided Mr. Ross into the study to show him the copy of his book. "I've been fascinated by this house for a few reasons and learned a lot about the history of the area, and this house, by reading quite a bit. It's attracted Lady Mary's attention with all the books I've been lugging about the house."

"Learning is never to be rejected." Mr. Ross took a seat and then frowned, pointing to the boxes of letters. "Yours?"

"No." Anna took a breath and then sighed as a knock came at the door, followed quickly by John poking his head through the door. "Thank goodness you're here Mr. Bates."

"I heard we had a guest of my invitation." John walked the space, holding out his left hand while the right gripped his cane with white knuckles. "John Bates, at your service."

"Jack Ross at yours." Mr. Ross retook his seat and John managed to gain one for himself, the sigh he gave off a bit deeper than usual. "I'm honored that you both contacted me."

"As we are that you accepted." John smiled at him as Anna pulled a chair closer to his. "I'm not sure what Ms. Smith's told you about our interest in your research."

"Nothing as yet." Mr. Ross let his hat hang off the back of the chair and then spread his hands toward them. "What can I tell you?"

"What led you to be interested in this house?" Anna tapped the book. "You spent an entire chapter discussing it."

"It was the house my grandfather knew about." Mr. Ross scratched at the back of his head. "He grew up in New Jersey in the care of the Grantham family but had a… bit of a falling out when he happened to attempt a romance with a Scottish cousin of theirs. The family looked down on it and it drove a wedge between them."

"I'm sorry."

"It's in the past." Mr. Ross shrugged, "It was a point of pride for my grandfather that he attracted Ms. McClare in the first place but she found happiness with a rather nice banker from New York and he found my grandmother. No one got injured but he never did repair his relationship with the Grantham family."

"Is that a reason why you accepted Lady Mary's offer? Other than to see the house?" Anna pressed and Mr. Ross pursed his lips.

"In a way I do feel like our families are connected. It's hard to explain but have you ever felt drawn to a place or reasons you can't explain?"

"Very much so." John filled in and Anna glanced at him. "As if something tugs you there. Something… a bit more spiritual?"

"I'm a very religious man, Mr. Bates, and I believe that there are spirits who want us in places so we can help them with a bit of unfinished business." Mr. Ross pointed to his book. "I mentioned it in my book because I believe the stories."

"What did your grandfather tell you about this place?" Anna leaned forward, her fingers digging into the cover of the book.

"He said my great-grandfather's mother came from this plantation. Her mistress brought her to New Jersey to deliver her baby since, the rumor had it, the father was a white man and my great-great-grandmother wanted her child born free. The Grantham family, kind souls they were, agreed and took her north so my grand-father was born in their house and raised there."

"Without his parents?"

Mr. Ross shook his head, "He never discovered what happened to them. Given my great-grandfather was half-black I know his father was a white man but no one ever knew who the father was. His mother refused to confess who it was but the rumor had it he was the Irish foreman on the plantation."

Anna went cold, shivering a bit as John spoke. "Would that matter?"

"It would since he was already married and had a wife in Ireland." Mr. Ross settled back in his chair. "But it was the rumor. It's all about the juicy details of an illicit affair between the black nurse and the white foreman. But those are just rumors and I can't put them in my book."

"Book?" Anna tapped the one in her hands. "It's not in here."

"No, the one I'm writing specifically about Sun Meadow and the work of the Grantham family in the Underground Railroad." Mr. Ross gave a bright, white smile. "It's something of a passion project for me. My great-grandfather never met his parents but he knew they were from here and so, in a way, so am I."

"Do you know what happened to his parents?"

Mr. Ross shook his head, "Died in the war as far as I, or anyone else, knows. But I guess the idea of conception under dubious circumstances, forbidden romance, and the mysteries of it all are what I love about history. They're just like us but the reactions are different."

"Reactions?"

"To that kind of behavior." Mr. Ross sighed, "Where once I would've worked in these fields, now I can look at them and hope to one day own them. It's an interesting thought to go along with the potential of something worse if I look wrong at someone."

"It must be difficult for you here." Anna bit at her lip as Mr. Ross nodded.

"It's a bit difficult but I'm used to it."

"You shouldn't be." John frowned and Mr. Ross winked at him.

"If more people thought like you then the world would be different." Mr. Ross shrugged, "I served in the war, like everyone else, and they still made me sit in the back of the bus. What a world it is. One wrong move and you're dead in an alley."

"You're not here alone are you?" Anna put out a hand but Mr. Ross laughed, soothing her when he put a kiss on her skin.

"No. I'm brave, not stupid. I've got at least three friends with me down here to make sure nothing happens to me."

"I'm so glad." Anna sighed, sitting back in her chair. "I'd hate to think we dragged you into danger."

"I'm not one to be dragged anywhere but I do admit to taking a few more risks than my poor mother would prefer." He bit the inside of his cheek. "I'm sorry to press about this but… I can't quite explain it but I'm curious as to those boxes of letters. If they're not yours then whose are they?"

Anna clacked her teeth together and stood up so fast she was sure she was no longer in control of her own body. Standing for a moment, aware both John and Mr. Ross stared at her, Anna gathered her breath and tried to sort through her thoughts. It took her a moment but she could feel the pull she recognized as Ms. Cotton's urging her to go to the boxes.

"I think they're something you'll need for your book." Anna dragged the boxes forward, balancing them carefully and handing them to him. "Because I think they belong to you."

"To me?" Mr. Ross snorted, thumbing through the letters. "I've never seen these before."

"Because they were left in a fire-scared trunk that someone dragged to the attic of this house. A trunk they found here." Anna walked to the fireplace to open the passageway.

Mr. Ross almost dropped all the boxes for as quickly as he stood up. "I knew there was a second one."

"What?"

"A second hideaway." Mr. Ross set the boxes carefully on his chair and walked to the opening, hauling in a deep whiff of air. "The one where they found the quilts was too small to fit anyone. This one though…"

"It continues through to a large underground room." Anna pointed into the space. "And if you continue it'll take you to the outbuildings as an exit into the fields. Or entrance, I guess."

"This is…" Mr. Ross pushed a hand through his hair, eyes blinking rapidly as if it would help him better comprehend what he was seeing. "This makes all the difference."

"As I think this will." Anna pulled at her fingers, "Mr. Ross, your great-grandfather… I believe he was the son of a woman known as Ms. Anna Cotton. She was hired here as a nurse for the children of the Granthams and to operate as a conductor on the Railroad."

Mr. Ross walked toward Anna as she closed the opening. "How do you know that?"

"Because I know the man she loved was named John Higgins and he was the white foreman here. Married, with a wife in Ireland. I know, according to those letters, she took a trip to New Jersey and planned on telling Mr. Higgins the reason but the war broke out and she never got the chance."

"What happened to her?"

"She was shot, in the back, by Union soldiers." Anna shook her head, "It was dark and she wasn't supposed to be where she was. But she died in Mr. Higgins's arms."

Mr. Ross frowned, "How do you know that?"

"I'm a religious person too, Mr. Ross, and I know that there are ghosts in this house who need their story told." Anna swallowed, "Because they're trying to tell it through me. They guided me to find this place, those letters, and to realize that your great-great-grandmother died in the room under this house when Mr. Higgins dragged her there, trying to save her. And I need you to tell that story because I can't tell it any longer."

Mr. Ross dragged his fingers through his hair again, "And what about Mr. Higgins? Why didn't he claim his son?"

"He didn't know he had a son. Ms. Cotton never had the chance to tell him and when she died he returned to Ireland." Anna faced John, "There he had a daughter with his wife, who had a daughter who married an English man, and they had a son… who served in Singapore."

John's jaw dropped and he hurried to stand. "Are you telling me that John Higgins is…?"

"Your great-great-grandfather." Anna nodded and pointed to Mr. Ross. "And yours too, Mr. Ross."

The two men stared at one another and then Anna, with John speaking first. "Are you serious?"

"As I can be." Anna grabbed for the mantle, holding herself steady through a barrage of emotions that flooded through her. Both John and Mr. Ross came to her side to help her before she sank to her knees. "I think that's what Ms. Cotton wanted you both to know."


	9. Bleeding Memories

Anna sat on the porch, her feet perched on the edge of the chair, and she rested her head on her knees. The reassuring click of John's cane drew her attention and she turned her head to see him. They both managed a smile at one another before John took the seat opposite her.

"Is Mr. Ross still here?"

"He's speaking to Lady Mary. Apparently there's some air he wanted to clear between their families and I think it's doing them a world of good." John sighed, pulling a hand through his hair. "I wish it could do the same for me."

"I'm sorry to spring that on you." Anna cringed, "I had planned to tell you when it was… a bit more private."

"I'm grateful for your consideration but I believe I was a bit more prepared than he was." John gave a little smile. "At least I knew you were acting as an unwilling medium for a ghost."

"Very unwilling." Anna took a deep breath, running her hands over her skirt. "But there's something about me that made me the conduit of it all."

John's brow furrowed, "How so?"

"She told me we were friends, a long time ago." Anna put her head back on her knees. "Said she needed me to help her get to the other side of the glass."

"The other side of the glass?" John shook himself, "What does that mean?"

"It's the phrase she used." Anna tilted her head to look at John. "She means that she needs to find her John."

"Oh," John whistled, "That's complicated."

"I'll say." Anna took a deep breath, bringing her head up to rest back on the chair as her hands gripped her ankles. "According to her, your great-great-grandfather's trying to reach you but you've got ghosts of your own to bury before you can hear him. It's why he's been talking to me."

"I wouldn't doubt it." John's fingers on the head of his cane tightened and Anna frowned. "We've all got demons of our own to wrestle."

"Are you in pain Mr. Bates?"

"A bit more than usual, if I'm honest." John rubbed at his leg. "The injury shifts occasionally and it causes me a bit of bother when it does. Rubs everything the wrong way as the saying goes."

"By the state of your hand it's a bit more than that." Anna let her legs slip off the chair so she could take his hand. "I do hope you'll confide in me, if you ever need to tell anyone about your pains… Physical or mental. I'm here as a friend, should you need one."

"I'm very grateful for that." John ran his thumb over her knuckles, "And I promise that I will, should that prove necessary."

They stared at one another and Anna maneuvered on the chair. Her foot slipped on the porch surface and tipped forward. As Anna went to catch herself, the same force from earlier, that inexpressible compulsion, drove her to plant her lips on John's in a defiant and yet gentle way. One he returned with an immediate hand to the side of her face to better guide the motions of their mouths. Motions that did not end until Anna needed air.

When she took the chance to breathe, John's face wavered in front of her. Anna blinked, losing herself in the callouses on his skin running over her cheek, but it was not John's face before her. Not the John she knew.

 _The shiver down her spine echoed the tremor in his fingers. Her fingers caught his and she tugged him closer. They crowded closer, the darkness around them keeping them safe from other prying eyes._

 _He traced her face, nothing but his eyes visible in the yellowish lantern light, and she held around his face. In the dark there was only the sound of their breathing filling her ears. And her pulse raced as she used her hand along his jaw to direct him closer to her so their lips could touch again._

Anna pulled back, her hand covering his at her cheek, and stared at him. The compulsive force had her leaning toward him again but a sound startled her. His hands stopped her tipping forward onto her face but she moved out of his grasp so quickly the chair behind her almost crashed to the wood. John put out a hand but Anna dodged to the side.

"Are you alright?" He tried to move but his leg seized and twinged. His hand clawed over his knee and Anna put a hand out toward him but stopped herself before she could touch him. Their eyes met and Anna shook her head.

"I'm… I'm fine. That was… It was…"

"What was?"

Both of them turned and John stood up so fast he almost tumbled back to his seat. Anna's arm flung out to help him again but he gripped his cane hard enough to send his knuckles whiter than a sheet. His arm held hers just above the elbow and he shifted their positions enough to put himself in front of her, though the muscles twitching in his cheek from the tightness in his jaw had Anna putting her hand over her mouth.

"What are you doing here?"

"Thought I should come and see what the fuss was all about." The woman stepped forward, opening her hands at the surrounding land as she rotated at the waist as if to show off the environment. "You've been here for years so I thought there might be something to it that I should see for myself."

"There's nothing for you to see, Vera, as I've explicitly said in all of our letters." John shook his head, "What I need from you begins and ends with your signature on those papers."

"Then I guess it's inconvenient for you that I left those papers at home." Vera turned to Anna. "And who are you?"

"She's Ms. Smith and that's all you need to know about her." John stopped Anna from speaking and kept himself between she and Vera. "What are you doing here?"

"I told you, I'm here to see what it's all about for you." Vera raised an eyebrow at Anna. "I'm assuming you've been too busy with you new friend to even notice my absence."

"I've been busy with my work. Ms. Smith and I were having a conversation."

"Not from where I stood." Vera eyed Anna, sidestepping John as he grimaced when trying to move to block her and had to lean over his cane instead. "I think Ms. Smith and yourself are a bit closer than a conversation."

"Mrs. Bates," Anna swallowed, facing her though the height disparity made her efforts feel a bit childish. "Whatever you saw between your husband and myself was entirely the result of my actions, not his. I'll beg your forgiveness and be on my way."

"I'm not sure what begging will do for you but you're welcome to beg if you wish."

Anna waited a moment before nodding. "I'll see myself out."

"That's for the best, I'm sure." Vera smiled at Anna with a mouth-twitching leer and Anna only spared John a moment before disappearing into the house.

She took the stairs to her room, ignoring the muffled sounds of conversation coming from the parlor, and shut the door. As she turned toward her bed, Anna stepped back toward the door at the sight of Ms. Cotton's ghost before her. Grumbling over the sounds of the workmen still laboring on the house, Anna shut the window.

"I would like to know why I'm even bothering to risk the heat of this stifling room when all I need from you is an apology."

"For?"

"Don't think I don't know what your touch feels like now." Anna pointed at her, jabbing toward the apparition and then dropping her hand when she realized the ridiculousness of her actions. "That sudden urge to kiss a married man wasn't my own."

"I can't encourage you to do anything you don't desire for yourself Anna."

"But I can't desire it, can I?"

"We can desire all we wish."

"We shouldn't all act on it." Anna rounded on her, "I'm not you."

Ms. Cotton swallowed, hanging her head and Anna bit at her lip. "That was-"

"No," Ms. Cotton interrupted her, pulling at the ghostly image of a shawl around her shoulders. "That was fair and I did make mistakes of my own in my time."

"All the same…" Anna dropped onto the end of her bed, wiping at the back of her neck with the corner of a shawl of her own. "What are you even hoping to accomplish?"

"My John needs a conduit."

"Like you have through me?"

"Yes." Ms. Cotton made as if to sit but Anna could not see the chair. The other woman smiled, "My world is one where it's how I remember it. And when I had this room there was a chair here."

"Did you cause that too?" Anna motioned around her at the space. "When I got my choice of the rooms I felt drawn to this one."

"We serve similar functions and we're similar people. It's part of the reason why you are the optimal choice for this."

"Because we're the same?"

"Because we've led similar lives." Ms. Cotton rubbed at her shoulder, stopping when she noticed Anna looking at her. "We're caretakers for children, we work for the Grantham family, and we're in love with men of a high caliber."

"I wouldn't say I'm in love with him."

"Carry a deep affection for?"

Anna nodded, "A much better term."

"I thought so."

They paused before Anna spoke again. "And you'll not mention the coincidence that both of us care deeply for men who are still married to other women?"

"Sometimes the world turns in a very similar fashion." Ms. Cotton shrugged, her whole body sagging in her invisible seat. "We can't help our similarities."

"In other situations I might suggest we're the same person."

"Being on this side of life I can say with relative certainty that there's no chance that we're the same person."

"If we were I think those doctors for the mind would want to visit with me." Anna let out a deep breath, "What is his wife doing here?"

"I don't know."

"Then why press me to kiss him when I can't have him? Why put those emotions there?"

Ms. Cotton played with the edge of her shawl, dragging the fabric between her fingers a moment before meeting Anna's eyes. "Because when I can live in the moment with you then I get to feel close to my John again."

"And you can't just relive those memories?"

"It's not the same."

"Well it's not right for you to use me as your tool." Anna stood up, pressing her fingers together to jab them at her chest. "You can't toy with my emotions. Or my John's emotions. We deserve the right to choose for ourselves what we will and won't do."

"I'm sorry." Ms. Cotton nodded, keeping her head down. "I took advantage of you and you didn't deserve that. I'm sorry."

Anna let all of her steam out, "I don't want to have what you did. I don't want the pain you're carrying with you because you loved and lost a man who was never truly yours."

"John was more mine than he ever was hers." Ms. Cotton stood in a rush, the force blowing loose papers off Anna's desk and fluttering her curtains before snapping the window. "He was mine and while you may believe the law said he belonged to that women he never did. She did not love him and he did not love her. He loved me from the moment he met me to the day I died in his arms. He was mine and always will be mine."

"And now you want to prove to yourself that he's yours by taking him to whatever waits beyond with you?" Anna waited, pulling at her blouse to try and bring some air to her sweating body. "Even if you believe he's waiting for you, even if you think he's the one who might be there for you, how do you know there's anything even waiting for you?"

"Should I think there's not?"

"I don't know, I'm not dead." Anna went to the window and threw it open, taking a deep breath of the breeze now coming through the space. "And I don't think there's anything else I can do to help you when I'm not even convinced there's anything I can do."

"Then you underestimate yourself."

"Or you overestimate me." Anna closed her eyes and sighed, "It's…"

She blinked and Ms. Cotton was gone. Anna turned in a circle and went to say something when the door to her room flew open. It banged off the wall and Anna tried hard not to react.

Vera stood before her with a head full of steam so it practically seeped from her ears. Her chest rose and fell faster than Anna could find wise given the heat as it only beaded the sweat on her forehead and at her neck to darken the line already there. They faced one another until Anna found her voice.

"Would you like a seat now that you've barged into my room?"

"What I'd like to know is where you get the confidence to take what doesn't belong to you."

Anna frowned, "I don't understand."

"Then you're either naïve or you're a fool, Ms. Smith, and though I'd like nothing more than to do you the disservice of thinking both, I know Batesey well enough to know he wouldn't choose someone that foolish."

"Then what exactly is it that you think I've taken?"

"You're trying to take my husband and I won't stand for it."

"I've done nothing with your husband that would put him or myself in any argument with you."

Vera snorted, staying just outside of Anna's room. "I saw you kiss my husband so don't presume to tell me what argument I might have with you."

"What you saw, as I mentioned earlier, was a mistake on my part."

"And yet you have the temerity to tell me you're not a concern?" Vera scowled at her, "Don't think you know a thing about my husband. If you did you wouldn't be so glib in trying to engage with him."

"I know quite a bit about your husband, Mrs. Bates, and as I consider myself his friend I'm here if he wants to tell me more."

"Oh my dear girl." Vera laughed and the hair on Anna's arm stood on end. "I could tell you stories now that would curl your hair in this humidity."

"I'm sure what I know about him is more than enough and if he's got demons to wrestle or bodies to bury in the back garden then it's his business and not mine." Anna managed a deep breath. "I think there's a bit more to him than meets the eye but I could say the same about you."

"You don't know a thing about me."

"I know that if a man refuses to see you , leaves you in a different country, and believes his suffering in Singapore is preferable to being with you then there is something to that." Anna motioned to her door. "I'd prefer if you left me in peace."

"And I'd prefer if you didn't try to steal my husband from me."

"You lost him a long time ago, Mrs. Bates." Anna shook her head. "Whatever frustrations you have with your husband are yours and yours alone so you'll have to find the answers between the two of you."

"I think you don't understand." Vera finally crossed the threshold and Anna managed her own snort.

"For a moment I thought you might be a vampire."

"No such luck." Vera held her gaze, "Stay away from him."

"Why are you even here, Mrs. Bates?"

Vera shrugged, "I guess something just drew me here. Something like an impression that told me I needed to be here. I can't explain it but what I know is that I'm glad I listened to it."

"Haven't you done enough?"

"Not hardly Ms. Smith." Vera turned to leave the room, "Not hardly."

* * *

 _She turned to him as he sat beside her. He said nothing, just handed over the letter with the flap open. Her fingers trembled as she took it but she did not read it either. Instead she let it fall to her lap._

 _"_ _Again?"_

 _"_ _Nothing's changed." He shook his head. "I don't even think she reads them. If she doesn't send them back then she's burning them."_

 _"_ _Are you sure she's burning them?"_

 _"_ _She said as much in this letter." He let his head hang down, arms drooping over his legs before his hands cupped the back of his head to keep himself bent in half. "I learned how to write better because I thought it might help me say what I need to say to her and all it's done is make it so I can read her insults."_

 _She put her hand on his arm, slipping down to hold his hand. "John, we can't just give up."_

 _"_ _Can't we?" John rotated his head to look at her, slowly rising up to sit straighter on the upturned crate they shared in the darkness near the shed. "Even if I could get my divorce it doesn't mean we could be together."_

 _"_ _What do you mean?"_

 _"_ _They wouldn't let me marry you Anna." John's hand flailed toward the darkness. "You and I both know they'd put you in jail and lynch me for even thinking it."_

 _"_ _Then we'll go away. Just you and me," Anna gripped his hand tighter, pulling it into her lap. "We'll make our way to Ohio or New York or even Quebec if we have to but we'll be happy together somewhere."_

 _"_ _Maybe New Jersey." John snorted, wrapping her hand with his other one. "We could still work for the Grantham family and make something for ourselves up there."_

 _"_ _Or we could go west to California or the Utah territory." Anna shrugged, risking a smile John returned in the dusky light. "The world is open to us if we want it to be. All we have to do is seize it."_

 _"_ _And we could run there tonight except for the fact that I want to be free to marry you." John kissed her knuckles, "Even if it's just a piece of paper it's-"_

 _"_ _It's not just a piece of paper John." Anna put her other hand on his cheek, forcing him to look at her. "It's an oath before God and I know how important that is."_

 _"_ _Not as important as you." John leaned forward until his lips were a hair from hers. "I'd risk eternal damnation to have you forever."_

 _"_ _So would I." Anna breathed and their lips met._

 _The letter fell to the ground but it hardly mattered. Hardly mattered because John pulled Anna over his legs so she sat sidesaddle on him to keep their lips together. Her fingers carded through his hair to dig at the back of his scalp when their tongues touched. And his hands were no less ambitious as they graced over her face before smoothing over her torso to knead temptingly at her breasts._

 _Anna shifted, to allow him to better reach her, and pressed her chest to his when she managed to straddle him. The layers between them provide boon and bane as the friction dug at her rising arousal while also stopping her gaining the full experience of feeling his. In the dark, with only the sounds of nature and the sleeping snores echoing from the outbuildings or the house, it was as if they were alone in the world. Experiencing the temptation of pleasure in their private corner of the Garden of Eden as if they might be Adam and Eve._

 _His hand met her thigh and sculpted up it to hold near her ass when Anna tried desperately to climb closer to him. They only broke their kisses long enough to steal gasping breaths but those soon proved too much and they sought to devour one another in their insatiable thirst for the other. Each brush of skin on skin proved far too enticing to be the last until Anna had to separate from John to look him in the eyes._

 _They did not speak. Part of her wondered if they ever had to since it was almost as if they shared a soul. If her heart broke she knew it would be half his… since his was already half hers. They were the stuff of the stars, separated for an eternity until the universe organized their matter and God put them together._

 _Her fingers traced his face and she put a soft kiss on his lips before pushing back from him. In the dark they had only the senses of sound and touch and smell… senses she planned to use to hers to every advantage. So she pulled her clothing off with excruciatingly exaggerated movements but the delay in gratification brought out such delicious whimpers from John that she slowed to a snail's pace. The perfect pace to surprise him when she stepped back within his reach to allow his fingers to brush her bare skin so the hitch in his breathing sent a shiver down Anna's spine._

 _He took his turn to trace her now. Not quite like their first night in the secret room. This was different._

 _Not just because her tightly curled hair remained restrained behind her head instead of fanned over a pillow. Or because the lantern they used for light now was hanging from the porch just out of sight instead of in the corner of the room. Or because he could not rise over her, to shelter and protect while driving her to insanely pleasurable heights._

 _This was different because they knew one another better know. Still a bit awkward, still unsure, and still afraid someone might walk by. But the thrill of their secret rested heavier on their souls now. They stood out in the open, exulting to the God of their creation with the most primal of acts, and Anna spread her legs as if to straddle John again._

 _He stopped her, hands never ceasing to move even when they applied the slightest of pressures to prevent her forward motions. Instead he stood, changing their positions slightly, so her shoulders pressed against the wall of the shed and he went to his knees. Anna sighed, letting her eyes fall shut as he reverenced her body with every delicate touch and gentle caress. In that moment there could be nothing softer than his fingers on her skin._

 _Soon John added his lips and it sent tingles over her while heating her blood. It beat in her ears as her heart pumped faster inside her chest. John's adoration of her neck and shoulders, the teasing nip of his teeth at her collar, and then his embrace of her breasts had Anna forcing the back of her hand over her mouth. He massaged her breasts with his hands between kisses, licks, and sucks with him mouth. And when he added gentle nips of his teeth between suckling at her breasts, Anna barely smothered her cries of ecstasy._

 _Her hands pulled his mouth to hers, forcing her expressions into his mouth while her fingers tore at the buttons of his shirt. Even then, with his skin under her fingers, the fire only raged hotter inside her. Anna tried to find a solution but the thrust of her hips against his allowed her primal mind to find the solution faster than she could on her own._

 _Again, John stopped her desires with a tender but firm hand. She whimpered at him but John sank back to his knees, still covered by his trousers, and covered her abdomen in kisses. His fingers dug into her hips before skating down her thighs to massage and knead the muscles so Anna's hands had to grip into his hair for a moment of support._

 _Even then it was not enough when his mouth settled over her. The exploration of his tongue sent her body in spasms of pleasure that sparked what few parts of her were not already subject to the raging inferno to a veritable blaze. Anna dug her fingers into his scalp so hard she was sure he bled from the half-crescent shapes he would find later when he submitted to a haircut. At the moment all she could seem to comprehend was his tongue swirling over a bundle of nerves until she cried out his name._

 _As she fought for breath, seeking to fill starved lungs, John's fingers joined the fray. Her trembling limbs and quivering body were no match for the second rise. Faster than the first, or still part of the first, Anna could not be sure. What she did know was his fingers found a spot inside her that sent her hips rocking onto his fingers. Every part of her wanted whatever waited at the end of his ministrations and when John sucked the same triggering bundle between his teeth again as his fingers dived deep inside her, Anna could not stop the hoarse shout that escaped her throat._

 _She sagged against the wall of the shed, the warping wood her only stable foundation as her body succumbed to the tremors brought on by indescribable exaltation. Slowly blinking, as if that could clear her sight, Anna saw John's shape in the dark. Not as well as she had when they first laid eyes on the other in their natural state, but well enough to speed her breathing when his ready arousal absorbed her view._

 _Almost reaching out a hand, Anna let out a deep breath when John caught it. He kissed her palm, nipping at the skin there as he crowded her close enough to the wood to open her legs wide enough to allow his erection to slip and slide over her. Whatever his actions earlier had done to her, the dripping results sent John's heartbeat thundering under her hand._

 _His grip on her thighs tightened and he lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all. Their eyes met and he adjusted their positions so Anna could sink down onto him. Rocking back and forth, his eyes never leaving hers, John finally settled as deeply inside her he could and their skin stuck together. She wrapped her legs around his hips, holding him steady as her body adjusted and rippled over him._

 _Her fingers traced the clench in his jaw, finding his ear with her lips over his cheek, and Anna whispered to him. Whispered as he thrust into her hard enough to rattle the door on the shed and grind her back against the wood. Whispered as he drove himself faster and faster under the frenzied encouragement of her voice expressing how he moved inside her. Whispered when he slowed, letting them both practically vibrate with the tension before slamming deeply inside her. And whispered when the frenetic teasing and touching overcame them both._

 _Anna almost shrieked her finish in his ear as his grunt filled hers. The last movements of their bodies, independent of their brains, carried them to settle on shaking legs. Legs that John loosened from his grip when Anna thought she might risk standing._

 _They stayed there, as close as they could possibly be without sharing the same skin, and breathed. The echo of it in Anna's ears matched the thump of her heart in her chest that resonated through her hands to him. In the darkness, with only the sounds of the night to accompany them, they wed in silence._


	10. Great Intelligences

Anna opened her eyes, forcing deep breaths into her lungs before she sat up. Her nightgown stuck to her skin and her hands shook. She tightened them into fists and glanced around the room. No trace of the ghostly apparition of Ms. Cotton permeated there and Anna caught the reflection of the clock. Too early to be awake and yet too late to effectively return to sleep.

Throwing her covers off, though the sheets just billowed in the breeze from her open windows, Anna groaned and got up to change. The water basin in the room offered little relief to her sticky skin, the warmth of the water only adding to the heat and the blush that radiated over her body. Anna ground her teeth and tried to force her thoughts anywhere but the heatedly erotic vision Ms. Cotton allowed her to see.

"Because that's necessary or helpful." She muttered, finding her clothes and forcing them over her dewed skin as she almost fought her brassiere for dominance. "Show me all the things I can't have and then let me wake up. Very generous of you."

There was no response from the darkness and Anna managed to tie her hair up in a complicated knot before splashing her face with the water from the basin in the hopes she could reduce the blush on her skin. All she accomplished was wetting her skin further and dampening her collar. With a growl, she snapped the towel to dab at her face and neck.

When she set the towel to dry on the rack, Anna caught sight of the tinge of gray on the horizon. As she sighed, her mind already exhausted and her body calling for the chance to return to sleep, she caught sight of a light flickering in the outbuildings. The building that Anna recognized as John's workshop.

Without another thought, although is she had any she might have suspected they were planted there by good intentions of a meddling ghost, Anna set off through the house. The back stairs Ms. Cotton showed her in the first dream provided Anna the cover of darkness but stopped her heart when she incorrectly anticipated one of the steps. Her hands flew out to catch herself on the walls and paused long enough to catch her breath.

Unfortunately it was also long enough for Anna to debate her actions. Even if John was in his workshop, his wife was on the grounds. The wife that still held legal claim to him. The wife who had seen their kiss and threatened worse should she see any more. The wife…

The wife John was trying to divorce. The wife he did not love, if he was as similar to Mr. Higgins as Ms. Cotton seemed inclined to suggest. The wife who held him in her thrall for nothing more than her own demented pleasure. The wife…

Anna forced herself down the stairs. Be it the start of the day or the end of it, none of those thoughts mattered. What mattered was ink and paper and the law and… She paused again, her hand on the back door as her eyes focused on the lights on in his workshop.

And the heart. That mattered. It mattered more than everything else. It was what drove a thousand ships to launch to Troy. It is was what toppled empires and burned kingdoms to the ground. It was what drove men to ignore the paper and the ink and the law because it was the oldest decision of time. It had Adam eating the apple Eve offered him at the risk of leaving Eden forever. And it was what forced Anna through the door and out onto the dewy morning grass.

The fog rising from the ground as it steamed whispered around Anna with each step she set toward the buildings. She rounded them the long way, not eager to place herself close to the cabin John claimed as his home, and stopped before his workshop. With one last darting glance toward the building where Anna prayed John's wife still slept, she raised her knuckles to knock the wood of the door before her.

It opened with a creak and the familiar brown eye that peeked out of the space soon revealed John's face. He smiled and then frowned and then sought an expression for a face struggling to interpret what Anna guessed were the same tumult of emotions she experienced for herself. The door opened wider and John's frame filled the space before he stepped to the side.

Anna entered, noting the dangling airplanes and models that wafted scents of paint and finish over half-completed pieces of furniture. She pointed to a rocking chair that twitched on its own and John nodded for her to take it as he selected one of the multitude of stools available to him. As Anna sat, using her toes to rock in the chair a moment, they just stared at one another.

A whispering tick somewhere, perhaps from a watch concealed on John's person, set the beat for Anna's motions on the chair. Time passed between then as they sat in the silence of his workshop, surrounded by his craft. Eventually Anna reached a hand out and dragged her fingers along his. He caught hers and held tightly, as if that would say everything that tumbled and jostled around their minds.

But as the echoes of sounds from the house roused them, Anna noting the flinch John made as he released her hand, they stood. She put a hand to his arm, holding him still so he would not leave her for the door. With a forced swallow, leaving her throat no less dry than before, Anna finally managed to speak.

"Why are you out here John?"

"I couldn't be in there… Not with her." John shook his head. "I couldn't… I can't be somewhere with her when I've spent time with you."

"She's your wife John." Anna let her hand drop, fingers curling toward her palm to dig her nails into her skin. "I've got no claim on you."

"You've more of a claim than she does." John moved closer to Anna, his own fingers whispering over her blouse. "Do you think I could've sat in silence like that with her and shared so much without sharing anything at all?"

"I don't know anything about her so I don't know."

"Don't…" John closed his eyes, as if trying to force his mind past a bit of pain. "Don't say that when you know it's not true. I know she went to speak to you."

"She only told me what we both know already." Anna stayed within the circle of his touch as John's fingers drew up and down her arms.

"And what's that?"

"She wants you back."

"She only wants to cause me pain."

Anna nodded, "I know."

John blinked at her. "And you're alright with that?"

"When did I say I was?" Anna took his hand from her arm to hold close to her.

"But if you're-"

Anna tugged his arm and used her free hand to grace the back of John's neck so she could better pull his mouth to hers. At first they both waited, as if hoping the other might see sense and stop them. When neither did they dived deeper as if they could now seek some kind of treasure only the other could offer.

John's hands framed her face, carefully manipulating her so he could seek every crevice and depth to her mouth with gently insistent explorations of his tongue. Anna's fingers crunched in the fabric of his shirt, wrinkling it under the fierce hold she established, and brought herself so close their feet shuffled to allow them to stand on top of one another. They breathed the same air and would not separate for anything.

Anything but the bang of a door in the distance.

They stopped, freezing in place as if they could disappear into the shadows themselves if they stayed quiet enough, and endured the silence before another sound forced Anna to release her hold on John's shirt. She tried to pat the area, brushing over the creases, but John stopped her hands with his. Turning her head up, Anna accepted the kiss John pressed there.

John stepped back, kissing over her fingers and hands with all his energy until she could not reach so far. She remained behind so John could turn off the lights in his workshop and close the door. In the dark she waited until his cabin door opened and closed again.

Moving gingerly across the floor, wary of any possible misstep, Anna slipped through the door and hurried back to the house. A house not quite awake as Anna snuck herself up the wrapping stairs to her room. The room that she refused to enter and so proceeded to toward the attic.

The door creaked and whined as Anna pushed at it to ascend the last few stairs. There, in the gray shadows of morning, Anna noted the efforts of the workmen from the floor below trying to shore up the damaged boards and rot that inevitably set in when an old house succumbed to damp and humidity. Weaving her way carefully back to the blackened trunk in the middle of the floor, undisturbed from her work with it, Anna knelt and opened the lid again.

With the letters gone it almost appeared hollow and empty. Anna gazed at the carved letters, tracing over them as if they changed. But she was the one who changed for where they once were nothing but a mystery to her, she now knew the man who owned them.

The man who held his dying love in his arms. Who bore two children but only knew of the one to the wife he detested. The man who served in a house to help others escape slavery and then lost everything that mattered to him. A man so like the one who left a passionate kiss on her lips before returning to the company of his wife.

"It's not as simple as all that." Anna jumped and as she noticed someone sitting on the other side of the trunk. "It's more complicated than you make it seem when you reduce it to pretty phrases."

"Was I speaking aloud?"

"No." He shook his head, sighing, "Sometimes thoughts can be louder if they're about you. I've gotten to be quite the skilled detector of the ones about me."

"Have you?" Anna eyed him up and down, "Why's your trunk in the attic Mr. Higgins?"

"I'd prefer if you called me 'John'."

"And I'd prefer if you both left me alone but since we can't get what we want, why don't we settle for what we can get." Anna inspected the bottom of the trunk. "There's nothing else in here."

"It only needed to hold my letters." Mr. Higgins ran his ghostly fingers over the surface. "It just needed to hold that part of us that remained here."

"You knew where she kept her letters?"

"We both kept them in that room she helped you discover." Anna frowned but Mr. Higgins only shrugged. "I know my Anna. I've known her for almost a hundred years. I recognized when she set to work again."

"Again?"

"She's tried, over the years to break the barrier between us." Mr. Higgins sighed, his mouth quirking into a bit of a smile. "You were the first person who made it this far. Most of the others thought they were mad or possessed."

"I often think I'm a bit of both." Anna closed the lid of the trunk and shoved it toward the door so they could sit across from one another. "Why did you bring the trunk up here?"

"Because I couldn't leave it down there. What if no one found the letters?"

"It would save someone from reading some of your more pornographic thoughts."

Mr. Higgins had the dignity to appear slightly abashed by her comment. "We were passionate people."

"So she's led me to see." Anna wrapped herself in a hug. "Why?"

"Her explanation would be that she wants you to better understand."

"So she's said."

"It's more than that."

"So I believe." Anna brought up her knees, ensuring her skirt stretched over them before wanting to laugh at maintaining modesty in the presence of a ghost she had seen naked in her dreams. "Is it how she remembers?"

"It's more of how she relives it."

"Like insisting I kiss Mr. Bates yesterday?"

"That's part of it." Mr. Higgins traced his fingers over his lips. "It's how we can feel connected. Some memories, like thoughts, are too powerful not to hear."

"And you heard them?"

"It's a bit like a love note across the barrier that separates us."

Anna shuffled over the floor, "Why does a barrier separate you?"

Mr. Higgins dragged his legs up to mimic Anna's position. "I'm sure you're smart enough to realize that while there are those spirits that wish to move on to the next life and only be happy that other wish for the demise of their fellow spirits."

"I've heard of the Devil and his angels in my Sunday school classes."

"It's not quite like that." Mr. Higgins put a hand through his hair, ruffling it. "It's… It's more that there are those, like Anna and I, who are stuck because we can't move on without the other."

"Won't you be together if you meet there?"

Mr. Higgins shrugged, managing another smile. "There are some who believe that. Rather insistent young men with name tags who've visited the house a few times in the past to pass on their message."

"Don't you believe them?"

"I believe when they speak about free will that it doesn't end with death. It's my choice and since I've not decided to move on to whatever comes next I can't. I've got to pass on my own but I've no way to ensure that Anna'll be there."

"So you're saying you'd rather travel there together and risk separation at the arrival than go there and wonder if she ever made it at all?"

"That's the long and the short of it, yes."

"Oh." Anna nodded, resting her chin on her knees a moment before rousing to her next thought. "Then there are other spirits just confused and trapped here?"

"Some. Fear is a powerful motivator and I've spent time wandering the world trying to convince the confused to move forward." Mr. Higgins tightened his jaw. "But the confused aren't the ones that worry me."

"Then you're saying there's a third group?"

Mr. Higgins nodded, "They're the bad ones. The ones who know that they've done horrible things and that there's not a paradise waiting for them on the other side. The ones afraid of whatever punishment God's decided to mete out to them so they'll delay that as long as possible."

"And make it difficult for others to move on?" Anna furrowed her brow and then shook her head. "What do they care about anyone else moving on?"

"What does anyone in life care about the concerns of others?" Mr. Higgins waited but Anna had no answer. "Death doesn't change us. We're the people we are when we died and we'll remain those people until we change ourselves. Those who did wickedly in life will do the same in death if given the chance."

"Then the barrier, between the two of you, isn't just some kind of guard to convince you both to leave this life. It's there on purpose."

"The same way that Anna and I can feel one another by the increased connection between yourself and your John, others feel that too. There are… tremors, of sorts, that go about and they can be felt on this side of life. Sometimes they're strong enough to be felt on your side as well but I won't speak to that since I've got more than enough to worry over here."

Anna took a breath, "Then my increased involvement with your… case, for lack of a better word, has drawn the undesired attention of some malignant spirit?"

"I could tell you exactly which spirit as well, but I doubt you'd be surprised."

"Your wife?" Anna risked and then blinked her surprise when he shook his head. "She moved on?"

"For all the things my wife was in life, she chose to not be those things in death. Death was…" He stopped, jaw shifting as if he could not find a good way to describe it. "Death was not kind to her. She spent her last few weeks burning with a fever and raging near madness. It was all she could do to maintain her lucidity and I think part of that meant she had no desire to haunt me any longer when she knew what it was to be haunted."

"If not your wife than who would take the trouble to separate you two?"

"The same spirit who traced your John's wife and encouraged her to come."

Anna shrugged, "I've no idea why Vera's here. I suspected it was that she wants to settle the divorce… Or drag John back to Ireland."

"She's here because the ghost of Alex Green told her to come."

"Green?" Anna blinked a moment, trying to suss up the memory that pricked at the mention of the name. "There was a Mr. Green and someplace called Greenland but it wasn't the country."

"He owned my Anna before the Granthams bought her." Mr. Higgins shook his head, "I confronted him once and he never forgot about it."

"What?"

Mr. Higgins reached forward and the moment his fingers brushed across her forehead, Anna could see it for herself.

* * *

 _John wiped his hands and dropped the cloth back over the railing near the spigot. He reached for his hat but paused as the steady clip of hooves sounded on the drive. Craning around the side of the shed he saw the cloud of dust, rising Georgia red from the ground, and snatched his hat to greet the newcomers._

 _He reached the edge of the porch as the horse and the butler did. The butler nodded at him, descending the steps as John knelt down as if to check his shoe. Instead his fingers flipped a small shutter twice and the barely discernable sounds from below the house ceased. As he stood, the butler risked a look behind him and John nodded. All the tension released from the butler's shoulders and he approached the horse and its rider with confidence._

 _A confidence quickly repaid with dropped whip into his hand as the man on the horse followed suit a moment later. He handled the reins enough to lead the horse to John. "I assume you know what to do with one of these."_

 _John tipped his head to the side and noted the scars along the horse's flank. "Better than you I'd imagine."_

 _The man only snorted and turned to the Butler. "I do hope Mrs. Grantham is home because I've got some business I need to resolve immediately."_

 _"_ _Mrs. Grantham and her husband are in town." The butler wrestled the whip into position and handed it back to the man. "They won't be back until the evening and you'd be wasting your time waiting for them."_

 _"_ _Would I?" He removed his hat, brushing auburn hair back from his forehead. "I'm sure when I make a few choice suggestions to some of our friends they'll wish they'd paid me a bit more attention."_

 _"_ _Is that the kind of payment you get for being an insufferably arrogant man?" John handed the reins back to him. "They're not home and whatever you need say to them you can send in a note, I'm sure. That is, if you can read and write."_

 _The man stopped, narrowing his eyes at John. "Aren't you the foreman here?"_

 _"_ _That's right."_

 _"_ _If I remember correctly, the ignorant Irish immigrant couldn't make heads or tails of the newspapers in town." The man scoffed, "Whatever note I send'll be mashed up by you I'm sure."_

 _"_ _The ignorant Irish immigrant is less ignorant now." John held himself higher. "We can all learn a few new skills. Unfortunately for you, it's harder to break habits than form them."_

 _"_ _Good breeding should never be broken."_

 _"_ _Good breeding would've suggested you actually know how to ride a horse and not cause her this much pain." John pointed at the horse. "I'm sure if she trusted you at all you wouldn't have to ride her so hard."_

 _"_ _If something happens to her then I'll do what I do when a slave wears out." He leaned forward, "I'll just buy another one. They're replaceable and, at the end of the day, expendable because they're just dumb brutes. Beasts of burden, nothing more."_

 _John bristled but before he could say anything Anna came around the house, pushing a pram. Her eyes landed on the man and she froze in an instant. Froze in such a way that John knew exactly who the man before him was._

 _"_ _If that's all you've to say, Mr. Green, I think you should be on your way." John stepped back from him, making as if to head back toward the fields but Green's voice rang out._

 _"_ _Is that Anna? Have they house trained you?"_

 _John pivoted to follow the man's path and stopped him reaching her. "She's caring for the children and should be left to her duties."_

 _"_ _Should she?" Green snorted, "It's like trusting a dog in the nursery to watch over the baby."_

 _"_ _That's uncalled for." The butler stepped forward as well. "Now, you've stated your business is with the Granthams and I've told you they're not home. Therefore there's nothing left for me to do but ask that you leave."_

 _"_ _I don't feel so inclined." Green dodged the both of them, heading toward Anna and where her fingers tightened to whiten on the handles of the pram. "I think I might want to say a few words to my former… What do I call you in polite company? You're still a slave, so I hear, but I guess now that you're handling children it's not exactly polite to tell everyone what you used to do for me."_

 _He leered back over his shoulder at John and the butler. "Unless the Granthams are as liberal with their house slaves as they are with their wealth. If they are then the both of you've probably sampled her for yourselves. I know she's not new but she was already broken so I don't think you would've had any problems."_

 _John lurched forward but the butler grabbed him by the shirt and vest, wrestling him back before Green could notice. "Focus John. We've got guests in the house and if he makes a scene we'll never get them out."_

 _With a growl John righted himself, pulling out of the butler's grip. He met Anna's eyes and tried to nod to her but she focused on the baby, trying to push the pram out of Green's way but he blocked her. "Excuse me sir but you're preventing me doing my duties."_

 _"_ _I used to prevent you doing your 'duties' all the time." He reached a hand forward and his finger landed on her chin for a moment before she shook herself free of his touch. "Do you remember what I used to tell you?"_

 _"_ _Yes."_

 _Green nodded his head at her, John moving closer to be on hand should she need him. "I'll assume you're just waiting to make it more tense."_

 _"_ _Begging your pardon, sir," Anna met his eyes, her jaw hard. "But you're not my master any longer and I don't need to answer you if I don't wish to."_

 _"_ _Is that what you think?" Green grabbed her wrist, tugging her toward him._

 _John rescued the pram from almost overturning and moved it toward the butler as Green and Anna struggled. "Let her go, Mr. Green."_

 _"_ _You think I'll stand for this uppity bitch to-"_

 _In a second he unfurled the whip in his hand and brought it out as if to use it. But John caught the end of the whip with his arm and used it to tug Green toward him. The motion unsettled Green and he almost tripped. He recovered in time to tug his whip back but all he got was John's fist in his face._

 _Green hit the ground hard and John tossed the whip away before landing on the man's chest to beat his fists into him. Any bit of exposed skin was available to him until the butler yanked him off. John pulled and tugged himself free, noting with more than a touch of pride Green's sniveling, sobbing form on the ground._

 _He caught his breath and put an arm around Anna's shoulders to guide her back to the pram. In the moment they had, with their backs turned to Green, John traced his thumb over her lip and inspected her for injuries. His hand landed on her shaking one before he nodded and pushed her toward the house. She hurried off and Green's voice brought John back around to face him._

 _"_ _You dare touch me you Irish bastard?"_

 _"_ _I'll touch anyone who dares try and touch what doesn't belong to them." John motioned about them. "This is the Grantham's land, not yours. Ms. Smith works for the Granthams and is, as such, not your slave. Anything within the bounds of this plantation aren't yours and therefore not for you to touch."_

 _"_ _I'll hang you from a tree and whip you raw."_

 _"_ _I'm not a slave and even if I were, I'm not one of yours." John stepped nose-to-nose with Green, forcing the slightly shorter man to cower back. "Now get your sorry ass off this property before I whip it raw and then stick the same whip so far up your ass you'll never walk straight again."_

 _Green quivered with rage, and a bit of fear if the damp part of his trousers was any indication. "You wouldn't dare."_

 _"_ _Seeing what I've already dared do, Mr. Green, I wouldn't be the one to test me." John grabbed his collar and tossed the man toward his horse. "Now ride your sorry self off this property before I run you off it like a dog chasing a bitch in heat."_

 _Green mounted his horse in a hurry and rode off, shouting something incoherent behind him. John let his breathing ease, the boil in his blood not helped by the heat of the afternoon. As he turned to the butler he only met the shake of the man's head._

 _"_ _We'll get them out tonight."_

 _"_ _I'm more worried about him than our guests in the basement." The butler sighed, "He'll be out for blood now."_

 _"_ _Would you rather he touch Ms. Smith?"_

 _"_ _I'd rather have handled it like gentleman than ruffians at a local bar." The butler let his mouth quirk into a smile. "Although, I never say no to watching one of the landed gentry wet himself when confronted with someone who can actually beat his ass to the ground."_

 _"_ _Mr. Carson, that kind of talk is beneath you."_

 _"_ _And he's beneath you." Carson straightened his jacket. "Try to remember that in the future."_

 _"_ _No promises."_

 _"_ _I didn't think so."_

* * *

Anna blinked and noted Mr. Higgins in front of her. He let his shoulders drop, "He never recovered from that slight. The Union soldiers burned Greenland to the ground and he died as a complication of wounds he received trying to fight them off."

"And now he's trying to stop you and Ms. Cotton's eternal happiness?"

"The evil will always be evil, Ms. Smith."

Anna nodded, "You're not wrong." She took a deep breath, "What do we do about it now?"

"We?"

"I assume we're going to work together to solve this problem." Anna pointed to him and then herself. "We've got the brains between us."

He smiled, "What's your plan?"


	11. Romantic Liaisons

Anna worked her way down from the attic in a hurry, managing to make it into the kitchen for breakfast. Mrs. Hughes glanced up at her with raised eyebrows and Anna tried to smile and shake it away. But her weak attempt at a smile abandoned her when she noticed Vera sitting on John's right side. She dropped her gaze to the plate Mrs. Hughes handed her when John looked up at her, busying herself pushing her fork through her food to the sound of Vera's voice.

"I guess we always make ourselves here when we will."

"Not everyone is without occupation." Mrs. Hughes sniffed, Anna finally raising her head to view the situation. "And I think you've neglected to introduce your guest to us Mr. Bates. It's been so long since we've had a guest it would be quite unfortunate if we were to eat as if we're all strangers here."

"I'm sure you detest strangers, don't you Mrs. Hughes?"

"I'd rather not stay at such a disadvantage when we're all under one roof. Especially since you seem to know me." Mrs. Hughes sliced into her sausage. "How do we know you miss?"

"It's 'ma'am' and I'm John's wife." Vera forced her hand across the table, slipping Anna a glare while she almost upended the marmalade. "I'm sure he's mentioned me before."

"A bit but I'm sure you're aware that Mr. Bates is quite a private person." Mrs. Hughes offered Vera a limp hand, barely touching the other woman's before retracting. "You came quite a way to share our table this morning. Must've been quite a trip for you."

"It was worth it to see my husband." Vera's hands curled around John's arm, digging her nails into John's shirt as if her claws could keep him in place, and she tugged herself closer to him. "I've missed him so terribly."

"Could've fooled me." Mrs. Hughes muttered, ignoring Vera's frown and interrupting her before Vera could speak. "And what you think of the South?"

"It's hot."

"I'm sure you were surprised by that." Mrs. Hughes raised her eyebrows, turning to Anna. "It being closer to the Equator and all."

"It's nothing like Ireland at all."

"Are you hoping to return there soon?" Mrs. Hughes chewed in the corner of her mouth. "I'm sure you're not planning to stay long dressed as you are."

"Wouldn't you welcome it if Mr. Bates had someone like me around?"

"I think we could do without more company."

"Is there something you'd like to say, Mrs. Hughes?" Vera's tone lowered and Anna shuddered as it grated at her.

"Nothing at all." Mrs. Hughes stabbed a bit of sausage with her fork, narrowing her eyes as she dug the sausage into the plate. "I'm Scottish and we don't tend to mince our words if we mean to say anything at all."

"And yet you're not very forthcoming with your opinions except in these little side comments."

"When I've something to say, you won't have any confusion as to what exactly that is." Mrs. Hughes turned to Anna, "Would you pass me the toast?"

Anna reached for the plate but Vera snatched it before she could. "I'll manage it. It's no trouble at all."

"I didn't ask you." Mrs. Hughes scowled at Vera. "I asked Ms. Smith if she'd pass me the toast."

"It was closer to me." Vera set the plate down in front of Mrs. Hughes hard enough to send a few pieces toppling onto the table. "Thought I could do you a favor."

"Perhaps you've misjudged what kind of favor you could do for me."

"I'm sure I know what kind of favor I could do for you."

"Then why not do us all that favor?"

"Because I'd hate to give anyone the satisfaction." Vera pushed herself up from the table, "I think I'm finished."

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out." Mrs. Hughes brought her cup to her mouth, sipping delicately while keeping Vera's gaze.

The other woman huffed and left the room, knocking the screen door against the jamb as she did so, and made everyone at the table jump. Everyone kept silent, the only sound the gentle scraping of utensils on plates as the occupants of the table refused to meet one another's eyes. Anna peeked at John but only caught the down turn of his mouth.

"I apologize," John pushed his chair back, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin before nodding at the occupants of the table. "Breakfast was delicious."

He limped from the room, closing the door softly behind him, and the sound in the kitchen grew to a low-level of chatter. Anna turned to Mrs. Hughes, noting the woman chewing more uniformly now that Vera was gone. "What was that about?"

"What was what about?"

"Your antagonism toward Mrs. Bates."

"That woman's destroying that poor man's life." Mrs. Hughes finished her tea, setting the cup to the side and scraping the residual of her food to a final portion of her plate. "And I don't intend on making this place home for her. She'll get no sympathy from me."

"And I don't disagree that she's a horrible woman, but it'll only come back to hurt Mr. Bates in the long run." Anna glanced at her plate and then pushed herself away from the table.

"She may be a vindictive harpy but I'm sure Mr. Bates can handle himself."

"I don't know if that's true in her case." Anna left the kitchen, hurrying through the grass toward John's house.

Before she reached it, the Vera's screeching echoed out of the wooden walls. Anna cringed, trying to hide herself, but the noise only drove into her ears. She searched around for somewhere to hide but the house was too far and the only option was John's workshop. The sounds of the argument came closer as if the two voices, arguing so loudly they rattled the windows, rounded the interior in ever-growing circles to bring them to the door of the home.

She put her hands on the door to the workshop but it resisted her. Anna glanced down, groaning at the sight of the lock holding firmly, and turned toward the house but it was too far to reach without running. And the risk of being seen was still too high. A tug proved enough to tell her that whatever strength she might apply to the door would be far from sufficient to break the lock or the handle. All Anna could do was work her way around the building to lean against the side blocked from the view of the front door.

The door slammed, knocking against the wall, and Anna sank back into the shadows as Vera stormed by the buildings with a handbag swinging wildly on her arm. Anna waited until she could no longer see Vera's back and turned back to the house. When Anna moved to return to the house she noticed John, standing on the porch, pushing his hand roughly through his hair. The force proved enough to leave it standing on end. His eyes met hers and his shoulders sagged.

Anna stayed rooted in place as John descended the stairs and came over to her. "What are you doing here Anna?"

"I was hoping to help."

"How?"

Anna shrugged, "I don't know. I just… I just hoped there was something I could do."

"There is."

"What? I'll do anything I can if you-"

John nodded toward the workshop. "Best not to discuss this here."

"What are we discussing John?" Anna stayed still, refusing to move toward the workshop, which only made John's shoulders sag more. "What do we have to say to one another?"

"I don't… I can't… I don't know how to say what I feel." John scoffed at himself, "I guess it's all just… If you want to go you can."

"I've not got anywhere to go." Anna walked toward him, grabbing his hands with hers. "I won't be like her. I won't leave you when you need me. I won't watch the man I love suffer if there's anything I can do."

"You love me?"

Anna blinked, "What?"

"You just said-"

"I…" Anna took a deep breath. "I do love you, Mr. Bates. I know it's not ladylike to say it, and far from proper given what I know about you and the situation in which you find yourself, but I'm not a lady and while I've strived to be proper I've never pretended to be anything I'm not."

"You're a lady to me." John stepped toward her, his hand caressing her cheek. "And I've never met a finer one."

Anna went to speak but a call over the grounds forced her back a pace. She pulled her wrist up to view her watch and jumped. "I'm late."

"I thought lessons were cancelled now that Lady Edith and Mr. Branson are back."

"Not according to Lady Mary." Anna licked her lips, "Mr. Bates…"

"Yes?"

"I…" Anna shook her head at the sound of another bell. "We'll speak later."

"I'll hold you to that promise Ms. Smith."

Anna dashed through the grass, the perspiration growing on her brow as the sun rose higher in the sky. She reached the house, darting through the kitchen, and hurried toward the study. She hoped to duck in without being seen but someone grabbed her arm in the foyer and Anna pulled up short in front of a gaggle of people.

Anna gazed over all of them, her mouth opening and closing like a fish as she struggled to speak and breathe normally, and swallowed hard. "I'm sorry Lady Mary I didn't mean to be late I was-"

"Never mind that." Lady Mary batted her hand as if to swat the argument away. "Ms. Smith I wanted you to meet Mr. Branson's friend and business partner, Mr. Talbot. He'll be staying with us for a few days as they work out some business."

"How lovely." Anna faced the tall and rather lanky man with a swath of dark hair. "It's a pleasure to meet you Mr. Talbot."

"And you Ms. Smith." He extended a hand and Anna hurried to return the gesture. "Tom's been telling me all about how much smarter Miss Sybbie is because of your tutelage."

"I'm only channeling the skills already inherent in my students." Anna waved toward the trio. "They're brilliant all on their own."

"Having met their parents I'm really not surprised." Talbot released her hand, wiping it on his trousers.

"I'm so sorry." Anna hurried to copy his motions by wiping her hands on her skirt. "The humidity here is high and I was just outside so-"

"It's alright." Talbot held up a hand, "I deal with it all the time in my work. It's hot as Hell down here."

"Mr. Talbot!" Lady Mary gestured to the now giggling children.

"I'm so terribly sorry." Talbot covered his mouth as Mr. Branson tried to hide his laugh in a cough. "I'll strive to do a much better job about policing myself and my language. I'm not usually around children."

"Isn't that painfully obvious now?" Lady Mary rolled her eyes and turned to Anna. "If you could-"

"Absolutely milady." Anna moved toward the children, hurrying to shepherd them into the study and close the door. "I do hope you three will forget what you just heard."

"Never." Master George giggled, moving his crutches into the study. "He used Bible words Mummy says we're not to repeat."

"And I'm sure there are others you're thinking about repeating that I'll remind you won't be repeated in my classroom." Anna waited for all of them to settle at their desks. "Now, if you please, turn your primers to lesson twelve and we'll continue with our maths lesson."

They all buckled down, focused on their books, and even kept attentive to her lessons. But as laughter from the sitting room across the hall grew, the distraction proved too much for them. Anna checked her watch and sighed.

"I guess that's all we can expect for the day. But this afternoon, while you're frolicking in the grass, I'll ask you to please think about our science lesson for tomorrow and make yourselves aware of how photosynthesis makes it possible."

"Yes Ms. Smith."

"Now off with you, before the day's passed you by." Anna watched them leave, Miss Sybbie pushing Miss Marigold behind Master George. She smiled, turning back to her desk to sort through the papers there.

"She pulled him from me before." Anna turned to see Ms. Cotton staring out the window. Taking a deep breath, Anna joined her to see John near his workshop. But he was not working on anything. All she could see, from the distance, was Vera swaying and John trying to move her toward his house. "She always pulls him away."

"That's what Mr. Higgins said." Anna studied Ms. Cotton's face, noting the twitch of her lips. "I saw him this morning in the attic. His trunk's up there. It's where I found the letters."

"They moved the trunk when-"

"He told me." Anna pulled her arms around herself, stroking her thumbs over her elbows. "I didn't say it because I wanted you to tell me about it."

"Then why mention him at all?"

"Because I need to know why you did it." Anna shook her head, facing the semi-translucent figure of Ms. Cotton. "Why did you risk it all? You left your baby in the hands of other people because you decided that a man with a wife was better than finding someone who could actually be with you. Someone who could actually love you."

"He loved me then and he loved me now." Ms. Cotton faced Anna head-on. "But I don't think you're as frustrated by me as you are by yourself."

"By myself?" Anna huffed, "What would I have to be upset at myself for?"

"You're upset that you love a man you can't have. A man who's bound to someone who doesn't love him but still held fast in chains you can't break on your own." Ms. Cotton's eyes teared, "You're angry that you want him with all your being but you can't have him the way you deserve. You're angry that the man you've lived your entire life to deserve isn't yours to have."

She took a deep breath. One Anna wondered Ms. Cotton might take because it was natural. Some kind of human tick the dead still retained as if to remind themselves they still lived in part, if not in reality. A tick that ran a chill down Anna's spine as she wondered if she might do the same when she was no more than spirit.

"You're not angry at me any more than you are at yourself for having dreams you know won't come true."

"Do you see the future?"

"Only God knows the past from the future, Anna." Ms. Cotton shook her head, frowning out the window again. "I guess we just see too much of ourselves in one another. We see the turn of time in one another. You see your fears in me and I see my ambitions and hopes in you."

"Hopes?"

"You've not lost him yet."

Anna snorted, "I'm sure that you're not so blind you don't see that woman dragging him down."

"I can see perfectly well. Perhaps even better than you can." Ms. Cotton pointed, "You're lucky Anna."

"Lucky? To be in love with a married man?"

"At least he can divorce her."

"So could your Mr. Higgins."

Ms. Cotton shook her head, laughing. "A hundred years ago what chance did a white, Catholic Irishman have of divorcing his wife for a black woman in Georgia?"

"I'd guess by your tone not much."

"There's a term they use now, a 'snowball's chance in Hell' that would've been apt."

"Have you even seen a snowball?"

"When I was in New York. It snowed so hard at one point we couldn't leave the house for days. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. And the coldest I've ever been."

"I know how that feels." Anna shivered, "Winters under occupation weren't kind either."

"Life is rarely kind. Meeting John was the kindest life had even been to me." Ms. Cotton stroked her finger along the window, leaving no trace on it with her ghastly apparition of a digit. "I had him and that was enough."

"But you never had him." Anna shook her head, as if trying to throw off a persistent thought buzzing around her head like a fly. "You should've buried your feelings or left it alone and-"

"And what? Saved myself the agony and the pain?" Ms. Cotton pursed her lips, shaking her head at Anna. "It wouldn't have matter if buried my feelings or my affections. The pain would've remained, just been pain of a different sort."

"But you couldn't have him as he was."

"I couldn't have had him even if he were as free as I was."

Anna stopped, her mouth dropping open. "Because of Mr. Green?"

Ms. Cotton stiffened, "Never mention his name to me again."

"What if he's the reason she's here?" Anna jabbed her finger at the window, as if she could push Vera over from a distance. "That's what your Mr. Higgins suggested."

"Why would he say that?" Ms. Cotton shuddered, "Why would he mention that man's name to you or anyone? He hated him more than I did."

"He's convinced that Mr. Green might've brought Vera here."

"I wouldn't know." Ms. Cotton shook her head. "I do all I can to stay as far away from the negative spirit of Mr. Green as possible."

"But what if he did send Vera here? Could he do that?"

"We've appeared to you, haven't we?"

"Would he appear to her?"

"I doubt he would appear to her because she's not the kind to believe it." Ms. Cotton sighed, "People like her respond to negative suggestion and he's got more than enough negativity for her."

"Then he what? Told her she might lose her hold on her husband?"

"With someone like her it wouldn't have to be much more than that." Ms. Cotton closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. "He almost stole my soul and now he's getting in the way of my happiness again."

"Why doesn't he want you to rest in peace?"

"Because he lost his hold on me and couldn't get me back." Ms. Cotton waved her hand at the house around them. "He was one of those who helped burn this house to the ground in an attempt to destroy everything."

"Did he ever find out about your work on the Railroad?"

"No. He wasn't the kind to care about that. He wanted to destroy me for getting away, that's the long and the short of it." Ms. Cotton faced Anna. "He's not going to allow you to find happiness because it might mean mine."

"If you hadn't involved yourself in my life…" Anna took a breath, "Would I have a chance?"

"No more or less than you do now."

"Really?"

"We've all only got the opportunities available to us when we decide to either embrace our desires or leave everything for someone else to solve." Ms. Cotton walked toward the fireplace, "Mr. Bates loves you. Truly and sincerely and as deeply as anyone I've ever seen or personally experienced. But you already know that."

"Of course I know that." Anna swallowed, "It only makes it worse."

"It doesn't have to be worse."

"His wife's going to take him away, which you already know, and I'll only be left with what could've been."

"We're all only ever left with what could've been if we never took the chance to have it for ourselves."

"Is that what you told yourself when you were having the baby of a married man?"

"Don't be cruel, it doesn't suit you."

Anna dropped her gaze, "I'm sorry."

"I know." Ms. Cotton put her hand out, as if to touch Anna's shoulder, but stopped just short. "It'll all settle as it should."

"What if it settles like it did for you?"

"Then I can tell you, from personal experience, that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have risked loving at all."

"That's just a think people say."

"They wouldn't say it if there was no truth to it." Ms. Cotton nodded at her, "You know what you should do."

Anna watched the woman fade away into nothing, With a deep breath, catching in her chest at the sight of John closing himself in his workshop, she left the house. A wave to the children satisfied them enough to ask no questions as she worked through the grass toward the workshop. Oppressive heat bogged her every step as if wrapping her in place to stop her motions.

But Anna reached the workshop and knocked on the door. It slid back only a sliver but she could see the outline of John inside. Without a word he opened the door enough for her to enter and locked it again once they were sealed together in the cool darkness.

"Anna-"

She put a hand over his mouth, the brown-black shadows around them giving her strength she would not have otherwise. The strength she needed to put her hands on either side of his face and draw her to him. The strength to sink into a kiss that tingled from her fingers to her toes.

Pulling back, Anna lifted her eyes to watch John blink himself back to reality. He coughed, his fingers trembling as they stroked her hand, and met her gaze. They said nothing but responded on mutual instinct to bring their mouths together again.

They shuffled together, John landing rather haphazardly on the rocking chair and Anna quickly taking position over him. She straddled him in a moment, legs on either side of his, and rocked into him as their kiss continued. The motion sent the chair swinging on its legs and for a terrifying second Anna's life flashed before her eyes. Her mother's inevitable disapproval by her position and her intentions almost gave her pause but then the silent encouragement of Ms. Cotton brushed all that away.

No matter what others may say as she opened the buttons of her blouse and his shirt. No matter what may come of their underwear pushed aside and their bodies sliding together. No matter the fact his wife occupied the house just a few hundred feet from their position. No matter the lack of propriety, or their noises, or the fact they breathed the same air. No matter anything but the reality of the moment Anna took John for her own.

Settling together, their clothing nothing but rumpled fabric and hastily shoved aside material, Anna ran her finger along a seam in John's neck. A trail of sweat shone there, refusing to evaporate in the stuffy humidity that drew rings of perspiration around their collars and arms. She dragged her nail over the spot before licking it away.

John shivered under her, his hands not idle themselves in their caress of her body. "What've we done?"

"Made a decision." Anna pushed herself up to look at him. "I don't regret it."

"Perhaps not now but you may in a moment. Or an hour. Or-"

"Never." Anna intertwined their fingers and pulled his knuckles to her mouth to kiss. "I don't regret one moment of it."

"I'm not a free man Anna. And I've done you wrong by assuming it could ever be otherwise." He gestured to their position. "I've shamed you."

"You didn't take anything I didn't want to give you with all my heart." Anna soothed, "I wouldn't change one moment of it."

John sighed, brushing hair from her forehead and from where it stuck and clung to her neck. "I should but I don't either."

"Really?"

"Really." John smiled at her, running his thumb of her knuckles of their still-joined hands. "No man could regret loving the way I love you."

Anna leaned down, kissing him again, and pulled back only enough to gaze into his eyes. "What will you do now?"

"I'm taking her back to Ireland and I'm getting my divorce." John did not continue until Anna blinked. "I won't leave until I have it in my hand. I won't leave it to chance or her good will any longer."

"You'll get it?"

"I won't leave without it." John smiled at her. "I want to court you properly. Like a man freed of worries and cares and…"

"And?"

"And able to do this without feeling like I'd lied to you." John's other hand glided over Anna's hip under her skirt, moving it out of the way enough to run his fingers over her tingling nerves. Anna shivered and shifted into the touch, biting at her lip to keep her voice down, and heard his chuckle. "To give you pleasure."

"You already did."

"There's so much more to give." John leaned forward, punctuating the words he murmured into her neck with kisses there. "And each one of them would come with nothing but love. We'd be attached only to each other and I could show you so many things."

"Show them to me now." Anna dug the nails of one hand into the shirt at his shoulder, tugging the material until it strained. "Don't tease."

"But you're-"

"Already deflowered and shirking my reputation." Anna rocked toward his fingers as they slipped over her still-wet folds. "I don't care what anyone else thinks or says. I'd live in sin with you if that's what it came to."

John paused, his thumb strumming down on her nerves by accident. "I couldn't do that to you Anna. You deserve a better man, a proper one who you'll dream about at night and can take you to a church wedding and-"

"I'd rather the right man than the right wedding." Anna insisted, slipping toward his fingers again so one ran just over her. "And I can't dream about a better man because there aren't any."

"That's not true."

Anna forced him to look at her. "It's true to me and that's all that matters."

John took her lips, pushing his fingers into her almost punishingly but the force brought her back to life. His exuberant exploration of her body and pleasure drove Anna mad. She writhed on him as his fingers pushed her over the edge again and again, leaving her a quivering mess in his arms.

And just when she thought there was nothing more to wring from her, John sheathed himself inside her again. They rocked, using the leverage of the chair to better engage his thrusts and the steady thump of his feet on the ground to hit all the spots inside her that brought keens from her throat and cries from her mouth. Every sound and shuffle edged with shrieks and sighs and sobs guided them closer and closer to their mutual end.

When they did climax, hoarse shouts and guttural groans matching in a primal harmony, Anna kissed him. Kissed all the breath from his body until black edged her vision. Kissed all of her hopes and prayers deep into him so they could buoy him up while he was away.

They rested again, silence taking over as it had that morning. This silence rested differently, rested more heavily, and ached more deeply. Anna finally pushed herself to her feet. She wobbled slightly but between the two of them and convenient tap in the corner they managed to restore enough of their appearance to risk returning to the world.

Anna left first, busying herself about the house and her room while John returned to his duties. Duties cut short in the evening as he bid his goodbyes to the house and waited for the cab. Their eyes only met briefly on the porch as he helped Vera into the cab and lifted their cases into the rack on the roof. His fingers brushed over his lips and Anna nodded at him.

Risking whatever repercussions her actions might bring, Anna descended the steps and extended her hand to John. He stared for a moment, Anna flicking her gaze to the side to catch the seething scowl on Vera's face, but took her hand. Their gazes met and for a moment they suspended together in the silence. Then the world crashed on them again and they released their grips.

"I'm ever so sorry you're going." Anna swallowed, pushing the words around the weight in her heart. "It's been a pleasure to know you."

"I do hope so." John rolled his shoulders, "And it's not so bad. I'm making my way and that's a good thing."

"Well, drop us a line… when you get where you're going." Anna flailed a hand behind her, as if to indicate the household now retreating from the humid dusk. "Else we'll worry."

"Will you?"

Anna nodded, "Very much."

"Well, we can't have that." John nodded at her, "Best be off. Don't want to overstay my welcome."

"You could never." Anna took a step back, "Goodbye Mr. Bates."

"Goodbye Ms. Smith."

Anna turned on her heel, forcing herself not to turn around and throw herself into his arms. Stopping herself clutching to him and begging him not to go. Preventing all the emotions in her body from spilling over and leaving her a sobbing wreck on the ground. Each step back to the porch weighed more heavily than the last so her pivot to watch John climb into the cab was as if she held up the sky when she moved.

When another weight, that of a comforting hand, rested on her shoulder Anna expected to see Mrs. Hughes. Instead only Ms. Cotton remained as sounds of life and laughter echoed like a dream from the house. Or a nightmare. One where Anna raised her hand to clutch at the last evidence of human contact but Ms. Cotton vanished before her eyes.

Vanished like the cab that only left a billow of red dust behind it as the motor departed… taking everything Anna wanted with it.


	12. Harsh Realities

Anna marked the pages, cringing as a smell wafted into the study. She looked up to see Mrs. Hughes holding a tray. "Thought you might be peckish."

"I'm actually feeling more than a little queasy." Anna waved away the food. "And I've got to mark these."

"I'm sure there's no hurry."

"You'd think that only managing three children in a classroom would mean there's no work but I think I allowed myself to get behind in the rise of the excitement of visitors in the house."

"Yes, I'll admit that Mrs. Bates put me off my food as well." Mrs. Hughes frowned, "Heartbreak can be as painful as a broken bone, Ms. Smith. And sometimes it evidences itself physically so we have even the slightest inkling as to how we can handle it."

"I assure you, Mrs. Hughes, I'm fine." Anna shrugged, "I'm just… Trying my best to get along in this new environment."

"Aren't we all?" Mrs. Hughes pursed her lips a moment. "Lady Mary's put out an advert for a locum gardener, until Mr. Bates returns."

"The grass always needs cutting." Anna waited and then met Mrs. Hughes's eyes. "Yes?"

"Perhaps it's for the best he left."

"Less temptation?"

"It's hard to feel you can't have something if there's nothing there to have."

Anna narrowed her eyes, "If I didn't know better, Mrs. Hughes, I might think you know something about it all."

"I'm observant."

"I'll say." Anna continued to mark before noticing Mrs. Hughes had yet to leave the room. "Is there something else I can help you with Mrs. Hughes?"

"I think it's something I can help you with." Mrs. Hughes pulled a chair closer to Anna's desk. "I'm not in the habit of offering this service but I think there are some factors you're not considering."

Anna frowned, "I'm not sure I understand."

"Then you're either lying or you don't know your own body." Anna swallowed but stayed silent as Mrs. Hughes continued. "When was the last time you had a monthly cycle?"

"They've never been regular. The war…" Anna shook her head, "And it wouldn't matter if it were regular or not anyway. I can't have children."

"Did experience tell you that?"

"No, a doctor after a rather violent run in with a German." Anna paused, her pencil shaking in her hand before she clasped it with the other to stop it shifting. "I've not got the body for whatever may possibly be going on and, in that case, the issue you're so obliquely referring to will solve itself in time."

"Would you want it to?"

Anna rubbed her thumb over the back of her hand, waiting for the tremble to subside before continuing. "Would it matter? It's not as if Lady Mary could afford to keep me on should that be the reality of my situation."

"Lady Mary's a rather accommodating woman."

"I was under the impression, Mrs. Hughes, that when you came into this room you were coming for a reprimand and information about a woman with disreputable herbs and now I get the feeling you want to take me to a doctor who'll make sure that the damage to my reputation is total and complete." Anna opened her hands with a small shrug, "So which is it?"

"I'll admit that in my line of work you do become rather informed on the subject of women with the capabilities and training that could possibly help you but I don't support your chances in those kinds of back alley establishments."

"Not strong enough?"

"Too strong, I think." Mrs. Hughes sighed, "I think, Ms. Smith, that you loved Mr. Bates more than you can say and-"

"Love."

Mrs. Hughes blinked, "I'm sorry."

Anna turned to face her, "I _love_ Mr. Bates. There's no past tense in hat verb."

"Not yet?"

"Not ever." Anna gave a small, sad smile. "We can't choose the people we love and we often make the mistake of loving people we shouldn't but, in the end, it's all we can do. It's what gives life purpose."

"Wouldn't you want to give the possibility of life purpose as well?"

"And if, stressing in this case the if, I were to find a way to safely carry his child to term, what do I do when I'm bearing the child of a married man?" Anna huffed out a laugh, "Just like she did."

"Sorry."

Anna shook her head, "I don't think you'd understand if I told you."

"Understand what, exactly?"

"That there's a story to this house and it's… It's the kind of story one should only tell when they're ready to weep." Anna picked the pencil back up but only turned it in her hands. "Why did you come in here Mrs. Hughes?"

"I came to see if I was right about my theory."

"You mean the theory that I'm pregnant?" Mrs. Hughes nodded and Anna echoed the motion. "It's been two months, to answer your earlier question."

"I thought you couldn't track them."

"Doesn't mean I don't know how to count." Anna dropped the pencil again, pushing her chair back from the desk. "I made the mistake of thinking this place could heal. Me. That it had healed me because I was getting better. I could feel my body and my spirit getting better and now…"

"And now?"

"I've lost him, haven't I?" Anna noted the tremor returning to her hand just before a tear dropped to splatter over her skin. "Even if I wanted this child, wanted his child, what kind of future would it have? What could I give a child I can't even give a father? Who'll grow up just like Jack Ross's ancestor did."

"Jack Ross?" Mrs. Hughes frowned, "The historical author? What's he got to do with any of this?"

"His ancestor was the son of an Irish foreman and a black lady's maid that lived and worked here during the Civil War."

Mrs. Hughes coughed, "I didn't take you as an expert in American history."

"I'm not." Anna left her chair, turning toward the fireplace to find the latch that slid the floor away and revealed the stairs to the rooms under the house. "Would you like to see the rest of the house Mrs. Hughes?"

Mrs. Hughes nodded slowly and Anna proceeded her into the depths of the house. They walked in silence, the slivers of light coming from the slatted windows under the porch giving them enough to see where they were going. Anna pushed the door back on the room and allowed Mrs. Hughes inside to see the space.

"How much do you know about the house, Mrs. Hughes?"

"Not much, obviously." Mrs. Hughes turned in the space, "What is this?"

"A secret, for hiding the slaves this house helped send north on the Underground Railroad." Anna walked the perimeter of the room, "The land Lady Mary owns now was once owned by her mother's side of the family. They called it Sun Meadow and when it burned during the war-"

"They lost almost everything." Anna frowned, turning to face Mrs. Hughes as the woman's Scottish accent faded into a rough, Southern one. "Not the way I lost everything but we've all got to lose something sometime… don't we Ms. Smith?"

"Who are you?"

Mrs. Hughes opened her arms, "Mrs. Hughes, your friend and confidant. The woman who knows you're pregnant with a married man's baby."

"No," Anna shook her head, "You're something else. Or someone else… I've not yet decided which but whatever you are, you're not Mrs. Hughes."

"Was it the accent?"

"Your cadence is off as well. And the fact that you knew anything about what happened to this house after the war." Anna stepped closer, narrowing her eyes. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were Mr. Green."

"Then Anna's mentioned me?"

"Anna doesn't speak about you." Anna held her jaw firm, a little tick of a smirk tugging at her lips. "Mr. Higgins, however… He had plenty to say about you. Mostly in regards to the questionability of your parentage but I could fill in the rest of it on my own."

"Mr. Higgins." Mrs. Hughes snorted, a guttural sound the woman would never dare let loose from her mouth in other circumstances. "I'm sure you're as perplexed as I am as to why Anna would choose that broken old man over me."

"Not sure it's much of a choice, in the end, but I guess if you can't see it then you really didn't know her." Anna paused, "But what does a master really know about those he considers, 'beasts of burden' who are available for a penny a pound."

Mrs. Hughes shook her finger at Anna, laughing. "You have been paying attention, haven't you?"

"I'm a teacher, that's my job."

"Then I guess it's time you got a lesson, isn't it?" Mrs. Hughes pointed to the spot behind Anna. "That's where he f-"

"I'll ask you not to use language like that." Anna glanced around the room, "I'm not interested in your version of a history lesson here."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want to know how you're occupying Mrs. Hughes mouth and body."

Mrs. Hughes dipped her head to look over herself before allowing a lecherously dangerous smile to creep over her face. "Haven't you figured it out yet?"

"Pretend I'm slow."

"Not hard." She scoffed and paced the room, forcing Anna into a counter motion so they almost circled one another in the space. "I'm sure you've realized that there are spirits that don't move to the other side when they die."

"Some are confused, trapped here because they're not sure where to go." Anna pointed at Mrs. Hughes. "You though, I've a feeling you're here because you think your work's not finished. Wasn't burning this house down enough for you?"

"They called me traitor after that." Mrs. Hughes snorted, jabbing her finger toward the ceiling. "They lynched me like I was a nigger for leading some of General Sherman's more… obstreperous soldiers here. Thought I'd been working for the Blues the whole time."

"Were you?"

"You think I wanted to lose my plantation and way of life to the work of pompous abolitionists and a tyrannical president?"

"No," Anna shook her head, "I can't see you parting with your toys when you had them in your hand so tightly clutched."

"But I guess when you turn to the Devil for help in destroying your enemies there is a price to pay."

"And you paid it." Anna motioned to her neck noting the hint of a scar undulating over Mrs. Hughes's skin. "You should be careful. I don't think your hold on Mrs. Hughes will last long."

"Don't you?"

"Your scar is showing." Anna stopped and Mrs. Hughes stopped too. "You sent Vera here, didn't you?"

"Maybe not so slow." Mrs. Hughes leered again. "I might've misjudged you. You're not one of the helpless romantics Anna usually ropes into her scheme to get she and Mr. Higgins out of my clutches."

"They're not in your clutches Mr. Green." Anna's brow furrowed for a moment. "I've got the feeling you're just as trapped as they are but you're… You're hurting them because it's all you know how to do."

"Seeking to save my soul too are you?"

Anna took her turn at a snort. "I'm not a priest, a missionary, or even a very dedicated Anglican. I don't care about your soul or anything attached to you at all."

"Then what do you care about, Ms. Smith?" Mrs. Hughes approached Anna and she stiffened but held her ground. "Do you care about the tragic love story of the ignorant and idiotic Irishman and his nigger bride?"

"I care that she was never his bride." Anna nodded at Mrs. Hughes. "You saw to that. Made sure there would never be a chance there either I expect."

"I may've written a few well-worded letters to a Mrs. Bates in Ireland, yes." Mrs. Hughes's jaw flexed. "She wasn't his to have."

"She wasn't yours to give to him either." Anna swallowed, "And no, I didn't care about their story. I didn't care that I was a reflection of it. But I do care about my own story and I've a feeling you'll interfere with that too."

"You're a threat to me."

"Why? Because as a reflection of their story, as an echo of their romance, I represent their happy ending?" Anna studied Mrs. Hughes facial tick for a moment. "You're afraid that if I find happiness with John then they'll bridge that barrier you keep trying to build between them. They're break it down and move on and you'll vanish as if you never existed."

"I existed."

"And yet no one remembers you." Anna shrugged a shoulder, "Or perhaps you're afraid that there really is a God and He really did hear all the prayers and pleadings against you when you tortured and tormented your fellow man. You're afraid you'll be punished for what you've done and who you've been."

"You don't know anything about me."

"I don't I'd need to know much to know you well, Mr. Green." Anna took a deep breath, "And I've a feeling you're only here on a temporary basis. A testing of the limits of the boundaries that keep this place safe from the malignant spirits like yourself that, for the moment, allowed you to take advantage of a moment of skepticism on the part of Mrs. Hughes and the dejected sorrow in me."

"Not so slow after all."

"Which means," Anna closed the distance between them. "I can send you away. I can make it so you don't come back."

"You don't have the power or the authority."

"It won't be very hard." Anna put her hand on Mrs. Hughes's shoulder. "And I won't even say anything as ridiculous as 'the power of Christ compels you' because that's not necessary."

"Isn't it?"

Anna shook her head, "You're nothing but a ghost and you've no power here."

"I took this body."

"For a moment but your time's come." Anna released Mrs. Hughes's shoulder and stepped back, "Get out and don't come back."

Mrs. Hughes body seized a moment and then she went to her knees. Anna bent to help her to stand, holding her still a moment before stepping back. The other woman patted over her hair and then held at her chest, with her hand above her heart, before facing Anna.

"Did I miss something?"

"Nothing you'd want to know more about." Anna offered her hand. "We'd best be getting back before one of the children finds this place and then we're keeping them out of it."

They ascended slowly and Anna closed the latch on the fireplace to return it to normal. She gestured to it, taking in the still baffled expression on Mrs. Hughes's face. "I found it a few months ago and… I've yet to tell Lady Mary about it."

"She'd want it filled in."

"Not necessarily." Anna motioned to the ceiling above them. "The workers haven't had as many accidents lately and the house is almost done. And if she keeps it all in good repair then there's a piece of history here to be appreciated and maintained for generations to come."

Mrs. Hughes narrowed her eyes, "How did you find this? I've worked here years longer than you have and I never even guessed."

"I'm not sure I could explain it in a way that you'd understand or even fully respect unless you then had me put under operation at the nearest sanitarium." Anna clapped her hands together, "But that does answer another question for us."

"Which one?" Mrs. Hughes put her palm to her forehead, "I've too many questions where all of this is concerned."

"In regards to what I'll do." Anna glanced down at her stomach and then smiled, "I'll wait and see."

"But you said you can't get pregnant."

"I can't have children, which is entirely different phenomenon." Anna rested on the edge of her desk. "I'm sure you had your experiences with the Germans, wherever you were."

"Scotland wasn't a place where there were many Germans so I'm afraid I didn't." Mrs. Hughes risked a step closer. "Did one of them-"

"We were starving, on the islands, and there was a rather crude offer in exchange for a chance to eat." Anna held up a hand at Mrs. Hughes's changing expression. "I refused. More on principle than for the fact I didn't consider it. You'd be surprised what you're willing to sacrifice when you realize you might just die as your stomach eats itself to survive."

"But if you-"

"That particular German soldier wasn't interested in my rejection and took what he wanted anyway before throwing the bread on me as he belted up his trousers." Anna sucked the inside of his cheek, "I did eat the bread so I guess, in the end, we both got what we paid for."

"Ms. Smith-"

"The damage," Anna continued, pushing past the other woman's need to administer pity to finish her story. "Was bad. I bled long enough that the nurse who saw to me before they could manage to find me a bed at hospital thought I'd die. But I didn't. And when the doctor finally did look at me he informed me, as kindly as I believe such information can be delivered allows, that my body would not support children. It'd been damaged too thoroughly to allow a child to carry safely and he didn't have the tools to fix it."

"And you never saw to it?"

Anna shook her head. "There was not reason to. Everyone on the island, after that, either pitied me or avoided me so it wasn't as if I was getting many suitors. And when I got home I couldn't beat many of the rumors so I set off for America."

"Your foray in New York?"

"Yes." Anna snorted, "Taught me that I'd never marry an American and since the kind of man I thought I wanted was in rather short supply I resigned myself to spinsterhood. I thought I'd never have the kind of relationship that would demand I fix what someone else broke."

"But now that you're-"

Anna put a hand over her abdomen. "I think it's time for me to address the concern. Because… Because I want to keep this baby. I want it to live. And I don't know how to make that happen but I want it to happen. I need this baby to live."

"Even at the risk to your reputation?"

"It's all I'll ever have of Mr. Bates and if that's it then-"

They cut off as voices rose from the entryway of the house. Anna and Mrs. Hughes glanced at one another before hurrying out of the study to see Miss Sybbie sobbing uncontrollably as her father set his bags in the foyer. Mr. Talbot nodded at Anna before hefting his bag and going to leave.

"I'm sure you're proud of yourself, Mr. Talbot." Lady Mary's voice broke over Miss Sybbie's sobs as she went to the girl's side and drew her back from clinging to her father's legs. "Coming all this way to make sure Mr. Branson goes with you."

"It's business, Lady Mary, nothing more. And it's only Atlanta so I think-"

"I'm sure whatever you think, Mr. Talbot, is best kept to yourself." Lady Mary nodded at the door, "I hope it doesn't hit your ass on the way out. And please, never darken the doorways of this house again."

He opened his mouth as if to say something else but snapping it shut. With a nod toward Lady Mary, and a clap to Branson's shoulder, he put on his hat and walked through the door. Anna glanced through the opening and noted the car waiting there.

"What's going on?" Anna held herself back from going to Master George or Miss Marigold as they came from the library with their distinctive sounds. "Why's Sybbie crying?"

"Her father's decided he's going to Atlanta to increase his business interests with Mr. Talbot." Lady Mary pointed back toward the library. "We'll discuss it later. Please give them a moment to-"

"But you only just got here!" Miss Sybbie broke from Lady Mary's hold and latched herself to her father's waist as the footmen in the house handled his luggage. "You said you'd stay. You said we'd be together again."

"I did." Branson pried her loose to go on a knee before her, holding her arms to her sides. "I promised that because it was true then. But this is a good start for us. If this goes then we'll move to Atlanta. You'd like it there. It's beautiful and-"

"I like it here." Miss Sybbie argued back, wiping furious at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Don't you like it here?"

"Of course I do."

"Don't you like me?"

"How could you ask me that?" He kissed her on both cheeks. "Of course I do. That's why I'm doing this. So I can give you the life you deserve."

"I just want you." Miss Sybbie hugged him again, her arms practically vices around his neck. "Don't go!"

Branson looked to Lady Mary but the other woman only folded her arms over her chest. He rubbed over Miss Sybbie's back a moment and pulled away. "I've got to go. This is the only way."

Miss Sybbie sniffed once and then sprinted up the stairs. Branson went to follow her but Lady Mary stood in his way. "I think it's best you leave now. Don't give her too many hopes."

"Mary I-"

"Anna." Lady Mary did not turn her head but Anna snapped to attention all the same. "Please see to Miss Sybbie. If she wants to spend the rest of the day in her room I'll have supper sent up but I want to make sure she's alright."

"Yes milady."

Anna hurried up the stairs, leaving the raising voices below her, and found Miss Sybbie's room. She knocked on the door and entered, despite the racket of sobs that continued unabated. Miss Sybbie curled herself on her bed, sobbing so hard she gave herself hiccups, and Anna approached catiously.

"Miss Sybbie?" Bending down next to the bed, Anna brushed the girl's hair from her face. In a moment the girl's arms strangled Anna as her tears immediately soaked her shirt. "Are you-"

"Why doesn't he love me?"

"Miss Sybbie," Anna carefully extracted herself and sat on the edge of the bed as the girl continued to cry on her lap. "Your father loves you very much."

"He keeps leaving me!"

"Sometimes…" Anna swallowed, blinking as her vision edged with the possibility of tears. "Sometimes the people we love have to leave us. They don't want to but they have to."

"Like Mr. Bates left you?"

Anna's breath caught but she nodded, "Yes. Just like that."

"But…" Miss Sybbie wiped at her eyes again as she finally raised her head from Anna's now sopping shirt. "Don't you think he'll come back?"

"I don't know."

"But he loves you too." Miss Sybbie insisted, her lower lip trembling. "Wouldn't he want to come back to you?"

"I hope so." Anna risked brushing a bit of hair from Miss Sybbie's eyes. "But I don't know that he can, even if he did want to."

"Don't you dream he will?"

"No," Anna sighed, "Because for all the dreams I used to have, I've realized they won't come true."

"Then my father won't ever come back?"

"That's a different kind of love Miss Sybbie." Anna let out a long breath, "Your father will come back to you."

"You don't know that."

"No, but I believe it."

"Why?"

"Because he's your father and he loves you."

Miss Sybbie took only a moment to respond. "But you don't think that Mr. Bates'll come back and he loves you. Maybe the people we love don't always come back to us."

Anna had nothing else she could say.


	13. Sincerest Apologies

Letting out her breath, Anna twirled the ring on her finger and turned to Mrs. Hughes. "This is a lie."

"No doctor in this area would see an unmarried woman about keeping her child alive. And if they did you'd never look anyone in this community in the eye again." Mrs. Hughes hissed, turning a page in the magazine Anna knew she wasn't reading. "This is the only way and it's not a lie. Your intent was to have a ring on that finger… So it's true to you and to me."

"But there's no ring on this finger".

"What are you twirling then?"

"It's not my ring."

"Yet, dear. Yet." Mrs. Hughes bit down on the last word. "We're going to hope for the best in all of this."

"Not sure that's going to come with anything less than a miracle."

"Then we pray for a miracle." Mrs. Hughes put the magazine aside, "That's us. Hurry now, we don't want to make the doctor wait."

The two women smiled at all the nurses and both worked to try and blush a bit when someone commented on how lovely it was that a woman accompanied her daughter to a first-time visit with the doctor at 'this time in her life'. With the nurse guiding them completely occupied being the consummate professional, Anna almost did not notice Mrs. Hughes shudder. When the woman did it again she checked the nurse and then leaned over to whisper to Mrs. Hughes.

"Are you alright?"

"Never better." The quaver in Mrs. Hughes's voice, so unlike her, put Anna on edge. "I'm more than fine."

"You're shaking."

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing and please don't lie to me." Anna twitched in place, shuffling as the nurse opened an exam room to allow them both into another sterile, white space that echoed the cleanliness and dispassion of the profession.

But Mrs. Hughes said nothing. Only smiled politely as the nurse informed them of their waiting time and left the room. The only noise to pass between the two women was the oppressive tick of the clock in the corner as Anna counted Mrs. Hughes's fidgets until the woman shuffled in her seat no less than five times in as many seconds.

"It's not nothing. You can't sit still." Anna's volume in the quiet room had both of them jumping slightly. "Please tell me what's wrong."

Mrs. Hughes sighed and manipulated the handle of her handbag. "I'm sure you're aware that before the great incentives of the modern age, there was such a thing in London as workhouses?"

Anna frowned, nodding slowly. "And a few other places. Poorhouses and places for people to go when they had nothing but didn't want to live on the street."

"That makes it sound almost benign."

"I've never seen one myself but…" Anna swallowed, "I've heard stories."

"I had a brother, Charlie, who was in one for a time… After prison."

Anna dropped her gaze, granting Mrs. Hughes what little privacy the room offered them in such close quarters. "I'm sorry."

"They were… Supposed to be to help people get back on their feet but it was one prison to another." Mrs. Hughes's voice shook slightly. "He got away from the place, found a job in Ireland, but… There's a howl there. A thing of its own that you hear from those trapped behind the walls that tells you everything you need to know about the desperation and depravity of such an institution."

"And so you don't like hospitals?"

"They remind me too much of those places. Before I came to America to work for Lady Mary they were converting the old workhouses into hospitals." Mrs. Hughes shuddered again, "I swore I'd never set foot in one of those places."

Anna reached across the distance between the two of them to hold her hand. Mrs. Hughes smiled at her, squeezing back for a moment, and then released to leave them both to their own thoughts. Finally, perhaps to break the monotony of the ticking clock, Anna spoke again.

"Thank you for coming with me. For not… judging my actions."

"We've all been young before." Mrs. Hughes sighed, the corners of her mouth twitching into a smile that finally eased the tension held in her shoulders. "There was a young man, when I was still in Argyle, who lived on the farm next to mine. We had our… dalliances, as young people do, and he even proposed marriage when we were old enough."

"But you didn't marry him?"

Mrs. Hughes shook her head, "I may've grown up in the same place as he did but I didn't grow up like he did. I wanted something more than what I had there and he was fine with the life he had on his farm. If I married him then I would be the same person I always was."

"Sometimes I wonder what kind of life I would've had if I never left the home where I grew up." Anna shrugged, her head leaning back against the wall. "If I never wanted to go to Guernsey or came here… Maybe so much of the bad that happens to us wouldn't happen if we never left home."

"But then where would life get its experiences?" Mrs. Hughes smiled, more satisfied and satiated then joyous. "If I'd stayed in Argyle, been a farmer's wife the way I was a farmer's daughter, I wouldn't have achieved so much. I wouldn't be the person that I am and, in retrospect, that would be quite the shame."

"A little less pained though, yes?"

"Life is about the difficult things that we overcome and learn from."

They were silent until the door opened and the doctor entered the room. He smiled at them and frowned for a moment before checking the form. "I apologize, I wasn't expecting two women."

"Only one of us is here for your expertise." Anna raised her left hand, noting the doctor's gaze flicking toward the ring. "My… Mother is here to keep me company since my husband's a bit busy with work."

"Of course." The doctor smiled and stepped back to open his hand toward the table in the middle of the room. "If you'd just sit up here I can start the examination."

Anna handed Mrs. Hughes her handbag, taking the three steps toward the table, and stepping up to sit on the edge of it. The doctor checked his forms and signed a few things before setting the clipboard to the side. He pulled out a few accouterments to work a quick check over Anna's eyes, ears, and mouth before making quick notes on his clipboard. Then he motioned toward the back of the table.

"If you'd lay down."

Anna slid herself back, settling her head to try and get comfortable as her body trembling against the table's top. Her interlaced her fingers rested on her stomach before moving so the doctor could check her stomach and heartbeat. After a moment, the doctor hung the stethoscope around his neck and pressed gently on Anna's abdomen. He frowned for a moment before turning to Anna.

"Do I have your permission to lift your shirt?"

"Yes." Anna swallowed, trying to keep her voice even and neutral.

The doctor lifted her shirt out of her skirt and pressed his fingers against abdomen again. He turned to his clipboard and made a few more notes before nodding at Anna. "You can sit up now if you wish."

"Thank you." Anna pushed herself up, tucking her shirt back into her skirt. "And how do I measure in all of it?"

"You're perfectly healthy." The doctor finished up another note, leaving the clipboard back on the little counter. "And I believe you're pregnant."

Anna sighed, "I had a feeling."

"But you seem a little too surprised." The doctor managed a smile, his mustache twitching slightly as he gave a little shrug. "Based on the information you provided me, I'd guess the confusion was because you weren't expecting to be pregnant. Not after… What happened."

Anna dropped her head slightly, "What are the chances of me keeping the baby? After what…"

"There are means to ensure it and I can put you in contact with some doctors specializing in this kind of operation and examination." The doctor combed at his hair for a moment, as if to reset himself. "I'd say you are at least eight weeks along. I have medications I could recommend to you to ensure your health and your baby's but I'd leave most of that to your new doctor."

"Thank you." Anna put her hands in her lap, her ankles crossing as they dangled over the edge of the table. "What… What else could you recommend?"

The doctor's eyes widened slightly and then he shrugged. "Just try to take it easy. Not as… I'd recommend a decent amount of sleep and exercise."

"That's all?" Anna's fingers wrung a little.

He gave a little smile and put his hand over hers, as if to quiet what little of the turmoil roiling inside her through the motions he could see. "This is your first pregnancy, isn't it?" Anna nodded and his smile softened. "I've never been a father myself but I would be remiss if I didn't say that in my experience helping to deliver a number of children, I know that there's significant fear to it. Your… position is a little different than most that I encounter but not so unusual that I can't empathize with your fears."

"I just want it to be healthy and to live and-"

"And you'd be surprised at how far we've come in making those kinds of worries things of the past as much as possible." He removed his hand, "I'll give you the information for Doctor Ryder so he can consult on a solution to your physical concerns. But I would recommend that you set another appointment for me to check on you here every two weeks, just to make sure you and Baby are coming along."

Anna frowned for a moment, "Do you not have midwives in America?"

"We do but…" He winced, "They're not as popular as they are in Great Britain. Here we depend far more on the hospital method for care and delivery. We've found it allows us faster response times for the needs of our patients and we're better equipped to deal with the possible complications of delivery."

When Anna's face scrunched with worry he put up another hand. "Childbirth and delivery have never been an exact science. Even the science of medicine isn't exact because we're all so different. But we find that hospitals are, on the whole, safer than delivery in the home."

"So I won't have a midwife?"

"I'm sure you could find one, if that would comfort you, but we don't have many on staff here. Most of the nurses qualified through midwifery courses but they're general practitioners as far as their medical expertise. Men like Doctor Ryder are for obstetrics and what they're starting to call gynecology."

"Study of women?"

"I'd call it more the studies for women, as it's specialization in disease significant and unique to women, as well as covering the details and necessities of childbirth, which is a uniquely female capability."

"If I didn't know better I'd assume you were a bit jealous about it Doctor."

He shrugged, offering a hand to help Anna down from the table. "My mother was a midwife and it always fascinated me."

"And you didn't become one of the obstetric experts?"

"I decided I could do more in general practice." He extended his hand to Anna, shaking hers firmly. "I'll see you in two weeks, just to make sure it's all coming along as well as we hope."

"I'm grateful for how you…" Anna frowned a moment, "You've put me at ease, Doctor, and there's a lot about this that worries me."

"As it should." He nodded toward her abdomen. "You're bringing life into the world. That is no mean feat and, in my humbly uneducated opinion on it all, the fear is what reminds us of the gravity of our obligation."

"Well thank you for helping remind me that the fear isn't all consuming." Anna stepped back and then paused near the door as the doctor turned his attentions to Mrs. Hughes.

"And I do apologize for not introducing myself to either of you sooner. I get ahead of myself too often in this business." He shook her head, "Richard Clarkson."

"Elsie Hughes." Mrs. Hughes shook his hand firmly. "And you've got a touch about you that I've not seen in many doctors."

"Curated a fine collection of them?"

She gave a little laugh, "I'm a simple girl from a simple place. The only doctors I saw were those in a big hurry with little time."

"Now our patients come to us so the time is a bit more flexible." He released her hand. "I do hope that we've not put your off booking an appointment of your own. Just a check up to make sure you're still in as fine a form on the inside as you already appear to be on the outside."

Mrs. Hughes beamed, a blush forming over the slight crags of her cheeks. "You'd best be careful you don't flatter me too much. It might not be good for my delicate constitution."

"Based on your accent you're anything but delicate." Doctor Clarkson clasped his hands behind his back. "My mother was from Glasgow."

"Then you're obviously good stock." Mrs. Hughes caught Anna's eye and gathered herself. "Well, we'd best be going. I wouldn't want to leave the house unattended too long or it might burn down in my absence."

A shot of cold ran through Anna's spine and she tried to suppress a shiver. Her hand clamped on the door knob and it took all of her power to relax the clench of her muscles enough to watch the white leave her knuckles. She breathed deeply and opened the door as Mrs. Hughes came to her shoulder, none the wiser for the moment that passed not a foot from her.

They took the information for Doctor Ryder, Anna accepting the generous offer to arrange the meeting on her behalf, and set her following appointments in accordance with Doctor Clarkson's suggestions. The midafternoon sun hit them almost as hard as the muggy air and Anna almost groaned. "I'll never get used to this. The wet feeling you get just stepping outside."

"It's quite different from anywhere I've ever been." Mrs. Hughes conceded and Anna watched the slight skip in the woman's step.

"Have you…" Anna chewed the inside of her cheek. "Have you ever thought about the idea of courting?"

"At my age?"

Anna shrugged, "There is the thought that age is just a number. More to the point, as a Christian, if we believe in the immortality of the soul then the body is just a vessel. Age, in that regard, is a human construct. It doesn't mean anything to the eternity of our affections."

"If I had less sense than I do, I'd assume you'd prepared that speech after an orchestration to try and have me seduced by that rather lovely doctor."

"If I'd known it would work I might've tried to amend my position sooner." Anna risked a smile at Mrs. Hughes and then the corners of her mouth faltered.

Mrs. Hughes reached out a hand as they reached the bus stop. "He's not written, has he?"

"I'm not sure he's had the chance and, even if he did, given what little I know of his wife I don't think it would matter."

"Then you've not told him about…" Mrs. Hughes's eyes darted toward Anna's abdomen, keeping silent as they were joined by a number of colored ladies gathering to chatter in their maid uniforms.

"And risk that she'd see it and all of his intentions to finally divorce his wife come to naught?" Anna shook her head, "Even if he never came back, never freed himself from her clutches, I'd still want this. I'd want it more with him but…"

"Life's hard that way. Giving us the parts of what we want and asking us to build our dreams a bit differently than we'd first intended."

Anna nodded, her fingers grazing her abdomen as the bus arrived. They took seats in the front and Anna barely noticed the women filing past her to take their seats in the back, a sign clearly delineating the difference between the two sections. A hiss and jerk had them off and moving out of town to circle back toward the predominately black neighborhoods and the outlying houses like Downton Place.

Or, as Anna reminded herself, Sun Meadow.

She continued staring out the window and started when she recognized a man walking along the side of the road toward a car. A white man leaned near the driver's side, reading a newspaper, but the man walking around the car was black. It was Jack Ross and the man, she assumed, provided his protection in the area.

Anna stood up quickly as the bus wheezed to a stop, a decent number of ladies from the back using the rear exit to get off, and made for the front. Mrs. Hughes called after her but Anna only hurried an explanation about 'needing something from the shops' before jumping from the bus. The doors shut and she waved to Mrs. Hughes before checking the road to cross toward the car.

Mr. Ross looked up, the man with the newspaper lowering it for a moment to check if there was trouble before folding it entirely to toss onto the driver's seat as Anna approached. She extended her hand toward Mr. Ross and then the other man. "I do hope I'm not intruding on your afternoon."

"We're just scoping out the supposed site of an old plantation in the area." Ross held up some scans of old maps and directed Anna's attention across the road. "There used to be a mid-sized plantation there called Grand Terrace."

"Ostentatious."

"The slave owners weren't known for their subtlety." Ross tucked the scans into a file he carried, Anna noted the slight damp from the sweat on his hands. "How can I be of assistance to you today?"

"First I should probably be introduced to your compatriot." Anna extended her hand to the man, "Anna Smith."

"Atticus Aldridge." He shook her hand firmly, his smile as welcoming and honest as Ross's. "Jack told me that you were the one who showed me the secrets of Sun Meadow. You should've seen him. Banged away on his typewriter for hours after that. It was so loud in our hotel room I couldn't sleep."

Anna cringed, "My apologies for that."

"It's better than him moping when he can't find out what to write." Aldridge smiled again, almost instantaneously putting Anna at ease. "But I'll assume you need something from Jack."

"I was curious about a few things in my own… research." Anna flicked her gaze toward Ross, "I'm not sure how much he's told you about how that passage was discovered but-"

"If it's anything to do with anything spiritual then you're in good company." He leaned down toward her, "My family's of the Jewish tradition and we believe very strongly in the visitation of others from whatever lies beyond this life."

Anna sighed, "That makes my next comment a little less odd, in context."

Ross frowned, "Did you find something else at the house?"

"More that something else found me." Anna ground her teeth a moment, "In your research, about the area, what did you find about a plantation known as Greenland? Or its owner, a Mr. Green?"

"It was an old money plantation. Meaning, in terms of a relatively young nation, that the plantation was up and running when Georgia was still a British colony." Ross shuffled, loosening his tie as Aldridge ducked into the car to retrieve his newspaper to continue his perusal. "That means that the family was an older one. There's a big emphasis, especially on this coast, for the idea of old money, old names, old families, and the founding nature of your family. The Greens were one of the founding families of this area and that gave them a lot of power."

"We all know that power corrupts so I'll assume it didn't end well."

Ross shrugged, "In a slavery society I'm sure it's all on a moral scale with shades of gray. There were rumors that the family was a bit more… violent, than others but when you treat people like cattle I'm not sure what constitutes as violence in their context."

"Your ancestor, Ms. Cotton, was one of his slaves before the Grantham family bought her." Anna swallowed, "Would it be unusual to suspect that Mr. Green tried to purchase her back?"

"Depends on which Mr. Green you're talking about."

Anna frowned, "There was more than one?"

"Greenland plantation burned to the ground when Sherman's troops came through, despite the persistent rumor that the heir apparent of the plantation, the son Alexander Green, gave them crucial information in their raze of the South."

"Then the actual man on the throne was his father?"

Ross nodded, "Nigel Green. If there was a slave sold from Greenland to Sun Meadow, it was between Mr. Nigel Green and the Grantham family."

"So Alexander Green wanting a slave back…"

"From what little survived about the family, as far as personal records…" Ross cringed, "He was a bit of a sadist."

Aldridge snorted, "Not sure we should ever give qualifiers on terms like that."

"I didn't want to say-"

"He was an entitled dick who abused his house servants, beat his house slaves, and is supposed to be the father of no less than ten bastard half-black children." Aldridge supplied, all while keeping his face in his paper and his tone even. "Pardon my language, Ms. Smith."

"No offense taken, if that was your worry." Anna stared at him, "You're more than just Mr. Ross's driver, aren't you?"

"I do a lot of his research when they won't let him in the white side of the libraries or archives here." Aldridge lowered the paper for a second. "He's also my brother-in-law but don't tell anyone down here that a white woman dared marry a black man. They'd try to lynch us both."

"Your secrets are safe with me." Anna turned back to Ross. "How would he have bought a slave back under his father's nose?"

"He couldn't have but people like that aren't usually concerned about the consequences of his actions."

"What about his half-black children?"

Ross shook his head, "There are records of their births but they're in ledgers the way you record heads of cattle or pigs. He took no more interest in them than he did in the welfare of their mothers, I'm sorry to say."

"So they're in the wind?"

"Some of the records indicated that they were sold or stayed but…"

"Not much else." Anna chewed the inside of her cheek. "Do you know if he had any children by Ms. Cotton?"

Ross shook his head. "From what I could tell, Ms. Cotton was a house slave taken by Mrs. Green, Alex Green's mother. He took an interest in her and, I believe, had her against the wishes of his parents."

"If they didn't care about the others then…"

"It's not so different from the hierarchal structure of the British service system." Ross used his hands to demonstrate, keeping a distance Anna now recognized as slightly larger than they had at Downton Place. "For slaves, the worst thing to be was a field slave. You worked in the hot sun from before its rise to after its fall. You were whipped, beaten, and poorly hydrated and fed. It was the dream of a field slave to aspire to be a house slave."

"Because you were inside?"

"And better dressed. They had uniforms, some had basic education, and some were even considered a part of the family."

"The way a dog is." Aldridge inserted, turning the page in his paper.

"But there was power in a position in the house and a good house slave reflected well on the house itself." Ross shrugged, rolling up his sleeves as he tossed his jacket in the back seat of the car. "Parties, gatherings, and social functions would be judged as much by the professionalism of the slaves as the owners of the house."

"Then Ms. Cotton being a house slave was a high honor?"

"It meant she was trusted, had some power, and would be difficult to replace." Ross gave a little snort, "Imagine all the training you put into manners and etiquette and proper forms of address. It's hard to repeat that process so when you find someone who takes to it, you want to keep it."

Anna shuddered, "I'm considering this a little too close to Mr. Aldridge's dog analogy, if I'm being honest."

"And for its crass nature, he's not wrong." Ross rubbed at the back of his neck. He looked at his hand and then withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket. "If Ms. Cotton was sold to the Granthams it was for one of two reasons."

"Which were?"

"Either the Grantham family offered a price Mr. Nigel Green couldn't refuse, which might not be too far outside the realms of possibility. The Greens were old American money but the Granthams were old British money and in the South, especially pre-Civil War, that was still something."

"What's the other option?"

"That Nigel Green sold her to avoid his son ruining a house slave."

"I guess it's all a matter of the worth of assets." Anna sighed, "Why would Green fixate on her?"

Ross frowned and then opened his mouth in an 'O' or partial realization, "Is this about my cousin?"

"In a way." Anna bit the inside of her cheek, wincing a bit before speaking. "I'm of the impression that just as I've been actively visited by the ghosts of your ancestors… and his, that Mr. Bates's wife was visited by the malignant spirit of Alex Green in an attempt to cause eternal torment."

"Seems more than a little petty."

Anna turned to Aldridge, "You mean the fact that having Sherman burn her house to the ground, getting her shot in the back, and dividing the lovers forever wasn't enough?"

"Well," Aldridge folded his paper, tucking it under his arm to stash his hands in his trouser pockets, exposing the length of his arms so Anna finally appreciated the lank and length of the man. "Perhaps the bit about her being shot wasn't part of his plan."

"Why'd you say that?"

"If you're right, and he was trying to get his 'property' back, then perhaps it's more about losing the one chance he had of snatching her." Aldridge shrugged, "I've met people of the belief, 'if I can't have this then no one can' but I don't think he anticipated he wouldn't get her in the end."

"Then haunting her in the spirit world is simply his own anger at failing to get her in life?"

"She's not with the man she truly loves, by Green's doing, but she'll also never take him." Aldridge sighed, his shoulders dropping with the motion. "It's almost as if he hates the face he couldn't have her in the end as much as he hates them for wanting to have one another at all."

"Jealousy's such a tricky thing." Ross blew out, "It's hotter than Hell out here Atticus. I think we'd better be making tracks."

"Couldn't agree more." Aldridge pointed to the car, "Can we offer you a lift somewhere Ms. Smith? It'll be faster than walking."

Anna frowned, looking between the two men. "How do we manage it?"

"Normally I drive and Jack rides in the backseat, safer that way." Aldridge pursed his lips, sucking his cheeks in and out for a minute. "But I figure if Jack takes the passenger seat with me and you take the back then we'll not suggest you're with either of us romantically and it's simply two gentlemen acting chauffeur to a lovely lady, such as you are."

"After you've already done for me, it seems a little extravagant." Anna smiled and then mimed a curtsey to match the bows of the other men. "But I'll be more than happy to take you up on your offer since walking back to Downton Place would be ridiculous in this heat."

"It'll get cooler when autumn actually arrives." Ross opened the door for her as Aldridge worked himself behind the wheel of the car. "Nicer breezes and temperatures not trying to compete with the surface of the sun."

"I'll appreciate that when I see it." Anna sat comfortably in the back seat as Ross joined Aldridge in the front. "How much longer before you both go back to New York? I can't imagine you've much more research to do here?"

"Not much." Ross and Aldridge exchanged scrunched faces a moment before Ross turned over the seat to address Anna, "Maybe a week or so, not more."

"Then…" Anna bit at her lip, "Is there a chance, odd as it may seem, that Mr. Bates has written to you?"

"He's got a standing invitation to dinner if he's ever in Harlem but otherwise, no." Ross sighed, "I had heard a rumor he left Lady Mary's employ."

"It wasn't all by choice."

"I had researched about his wife."

"Not heard about it?"

"You'd be surprised how little this town actually has to say about Lady Mary, the Crawley family, or Downton Place." Ross sighed, shaking his head, "It's amazing. At one time Sun Meadow was the talk of the town and the Grantham family were competing for dominance in a small industry. And now… they're anonymous. How times change."

Anna agreed and sat back in the seat as Aldridge steered them up the red Georgian road to the front porch. Ross managed the door again but Anna reached over the seat to shake Aldridge's hand before leaving the car. "Thank you, for your generosity, and it was a pleasure meeting you."

"And you Ms. Smith." He dug his other hand into his shirt pocket and produced a card curling at the edges from the humidity. "As Jack'll probably do in a minute, here's my card. You visit anytime you happen to make your way up to Manhattan. The missus and I'd love to have you."

"Thank you." Anna held the card between two fingers. "I'd like to see New York again. I might… I might like it differently now than I did when I lived there."

"It's a place of constant change."

Anna slipped from the car and shook Ross's hand as well, taking the card Aldridge promised would be passed on. "I'm sure I'm not what you expected when you made your way down to Georgia to do research."

"No, but you've been splendid and you've helped connect me to branches of my family tree previously considered completely inaccessible." Ross coughed, Anna noting the slight tear in his eye. "I'll never forget that and I don't take it lightly."

"Nor do I, Mr. Ross." Anna shrugged, "You've given me remarkable insight about this house and the people who lived here."

"Yes, but they're also talking to you." Ross glanced up at the house, squinting a bit against the sun before sighing. "Part of me envies you, talking to the people who lived and breathed here then but…"

"Then you realize the price to be paid for it."

Ross nodded, "I'll stick to the ghosts I brought back from the war with me and leave the others lie."

"It's what's best." Anna rubbed at her arms, an unexpected chill going through her. "I don't know what I'll do with anything that I know or how I can really help them but I promise, if I can, I'll help reunite the spirits of your ancestors and help them find rest."

"You've no idea how comforting that thought is to me." Ross nodded at her before climbing back into the car. "And don't be a stranger. The invitation to Harlem stands for you as well."

Anna held up the cards, waving to the two men. "I'll send word when I'll be there, I promise."

The car drove off, spitting the red dirt into a hazy scarlet cloud that sat on the muggy air. Had it been just a tad wetter the cloud might have congealed but instead it settled back as Anna watched the car peel away onto the main road. She took a deep breath and turned to enter the house.

Her room was stuffy as ever, prompting her to throw her windows open and try to breathe in the faintest suggestion of a breeze. None came. At least not with gusto. All the breezes were sluggish, as if weighed down by the humidity as much as the people who pleaded so desperately for them were. But Anna did not focus long on the breeze as something in the outbuildings caught her eye. She squinted, frowning to furrow her brow, and then pushed away from the window to take the back stairs out of the house as swiftly as she could manage.

The steady hum of the afternoon barely thudded in her ears as the pounding of her heart took precedence. Even the sweat of exertion more than reaching for a glass of lemonade was nothing to her. All that mattered was knocking exuberantly on the door to John's cabin and waiting in the agonizing moments that stretched to mimic eternity as if to mock her desperation.

Perhaps she imagined the movement she saw through the curtains. Perhaps the shadows was nothing more than the locum gardener moving about the interior to find some tool left here. Or perhaps it was one of the day maids hired to dust and wash the buildings during John's absence. Or perhaps still it was…

But then the door opened and Anna could barely swallow. John, with the slight stoop to his shoulders from the way he held his cane, still stood as tall as ever. Perhaps he even stood a bit taller. As if… Anna tried to bite off the thought before it overwhelmed her and drove her to paroxysms of excitement. As if he finally lived free of the weight of his wife.

They stared at one another in silence, as if trying to find the words that might fill the gap between them. Anna's eyes flicked to John's left hand and noted the absence of a ring but then registered his eyes on her hand. She quickly pulled the ring off and shook her head.

"Then you're not-"

"No," Anna shook her head almost more fiercely now. "I wouldn't… I couldn't… I didn't… I…"

John's lips were on hers, his hand alongside her cheek, and his other arm wrapping her firmly to him. Anna stumbled into the hold and they tripped back inside the cabin. Together their bodies pivoted and Anna's back met the door as it closed, partially driving air from her body. But she did not give up the hold she managed to secure in John's shirt nor he the hold that kept her body close to his.

A moment later, needing air almost as much as they needed to keep their lips together, John broke the kiss. His hands framed and traced Anna's face, as if memorizing her while comparing what he saw and felt with a memory. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I… I was weak and afraid and I didn't… I didn't fight for you as I should have and now-"

Anna pulled their mouths together, surging up onto her toes for a moment but John dipped down to meet her better, allowing their positions to find the one that would leave them both satisfied without straining them too considerably. She only broke the kiss to put their foreheads together, taking deep breaths with her eyes closed as if to better feel him, smell him, and taste him. His hands roamed her body now, familiarizing himself with her form before pulling back so Anna opened her eyes to see him.

"I'm sorry Anna."

"I know." Her fingers traced the contours of his face, the newness of the familiar experience almost giddy to her. "Is it done?"

He nodded, "It's over. She's no longer my wife. I'm a free man and I'm free to marry again."

"Then…" Anna went to speak as John maneuvered himself to his knee before her. She went to lift him, noting the strain at the corners of his mouth as his leg shook, but John only caught her hands to kiss them.

"I've done nothing else about this properly but this I will do." He held her hands, staring in her eyes as his body trembled from the strain and the effort of his position. "Anna, will you marry me?"

"Yes." She nodded, tugging on his hands to get him to stand. One of his hands went to the wall, holding himself in place as his body continued to quiver. "Of course I'll marry you."

The grin that nearly split his face almost broke her heart. She put her hands to his cheeks, holding gently and sighing as he kissed both palms before succumbing to her urging to bring their lips together again. But it was slower this time, deliberate and delicate at the same time. The kind of kiss free of all worries that trapped her before. Even the merest tingle of suggestion that another presence occupied the cabin with them was nothing to Anna.

She broke the kiss, her thumbs not ceasing their stroke of his cheekbones as she relished the scrape of his stubble on her skin. They stared at one another as Anna took a deep breath. "I've something to tell you."

John's eyes clouded a moment, "Is it… About the ring?"

Anna nodded, "But not how you're fearing at the moment. There's no one else, there never could be."

"You might've found a better man." John swallowed, "You could've dreamed of one and found him."

"I could never." Anna insisted, keeping John's eyes focused on hers. "Because, to me, there aren't any. I told you that once and I meant it. I'll always mean it."

"Then why-"

"Because unmarried women can't go to hospital about being pregnant if they've no husband and expect to survive the scandal."

John's eyes widened and he looked down in shock, fear, amazement, and what Anna suspected was unfettered glee. "You're-"

"Yes." She smiled, tightening her hold on his cheeks to keep him in place when the buoyance of his excitement threatened to take him from her. "We're going to have a baby, John."

"We're…" He sighed, kissing her hard and with a little roughness, before pressing their foreheads together as one of his hands settled over her abdomen. "You've… You've made me so happy."

"As you've made me."

"How?" He shook his head, trying to pull away. "I've only brought pain."

"Don't you ever say that to me." Anna kissed him again, aligning her body with his. "You came back to me. You promised and you did. You're here."

"Yes, yes I am." John's arms wrapped around her, holding Anna tightly to him. "I… I want… I want to be there for you forever Anna."

"You will be." Anna dug the ring from her pocket, "Mrs. Hughes gave this to me but I don't think she'd mind if you borrowed it."

John laughed with her, sliding the ring onto Anna's finger before kissing the digit. "When I marry you, you'll have my mother's ring. For now, we'll make do."

"As we always do."

John ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, "We don't have to just make do anymore."

Anna's brow furrowed but before she could ask what he meant, John put one of his hands over hers. With a gentle tug he led her through the main room and toward a door. She barely noticed the kitchenette, the well-made dining table and chairs all bearing the signs of his handiwork, or the sofa and chairs he erected in front of a fireplace. The door pushed open and John waited for Anna to take the step between them before leading her inside.

A four-poster bed, with minimal trappings but a large mattress, waited there. The details on the bed, again, bore the marks of John's work and Anna marveled at the intricacy of the carving before John took her hands to hold her close to him. They were silent as Anna watched John's mouth contort in his struggle to find the words he needed to express what Anna recognized as naked desire covering his face. It almost killed her to wait but she did, holding his hands as he alternated squeezing them for support.

"I'd never force you, Anna. Anything I ask is just that, a request. You are the most important person in the whole world to me and if you tell me no, right now, then I'll accept that without argument. But…" He swallowed, "If you do want it then please allow me to love you. Love you as you deserve instead of in the dark, in the silence, and tucked away like something shameful."

John's lips were almost on hers, Anna not comprehending his shift until he was almost on top of her. "Please let me love you as you deserve Anna. As I've wanted to love you since the first time we talked in the garden."

Anna could not respond. She took his hands, kissing slowly over his knuckles, and lifted her head to close the final distance between them. A distance perhaps not measured in inches but in eternities. One they breached when their lips met.

They moved slowly. There was no rush this time. None of the frantic necessity of their previous encounter. None of the lingering earnestness of Anna's memories of the sexual exploits of their ghostly counterparts either.

Clothing dropped to the floor with gentle thumps and thuds, left unattended and completely forgotten in the haze of humidity, heat, and heartfelt longing. A time they finally could use to appreciate the contours and complexities of bodies they never let anyone else see. Bodies now laid as bare as the souls they guarded with the afternoon light seeping through the windows to bathe all in gold.

Anna's hands mapped the surface of John's chest, traced the scars and divots of his injured leg, and held his face to guide their kisses as she leaned back onto the bed. John's hands roamed her body, teasing in delicate strokes over her breasts and between her legs as if feeling her out before helping them position more fully on the bed. There he took position over her and Anna wrapped her arms around his neck to guide him closer.

But even her leg notching over his hip did nothing to urge him faster. He kept to his commitment, murmuring apologies and promises into her skin as he sucked and kissed her breasts, massaging them when his fingers and mouth traded places. And he continued through Anna's cries and keens of pleasure when his tongue explored the crevices and details of her center before bringing her over the edge.

Their lips came together again, Anna moaning into the taste of herself, and then gasping out as John entered her. He kept his pace slow, their eyes on one another as they dabbled kisses at one another between their motions and the rhythm they found for themselves. A rhythm that left Anna trembling and quivering around John as he shook and finally brought them both together.

They lay in the heat of the afternoon, lethargic after exerting themselves, with John's fingers caressing over Anna's abdomen. He leaned over to kiss her there, Anna sighing into the sensation of his lips on her skin and finding his hair with her fingers. The exchange of strokes left them both dozing with one another until a thundering noise brought them both back to full consciousness.

Another crack and sheets of rain pounded against the roof. Almost instantaneously the room cooled, guided by the torrent of rain now whipping from the outside. It snapped the shudders of the cabin against the walls and John hurried from the bed to check that any windows in direct path of the rain were closed to prevent water leaking inside. Anna briefly considered the state of her windows and then shrugged, she was not going back to the house as she was so there would be nothing to do but face the consequences of her choice.

John joined her back on the bed, cuddling as close as the heat allowed. Their fingers traded strokes and tracings of their skin until Anna put a hand on John's chest. He accepted the press of her small hand and rolled onto his back, allowing her to straddle him, and rocked with her as Anna rubbed her body against his. His fingers buried between her legs again and moved her with practiced efficiency toward the sensations she discovered only with him and missed at his hands.

As she struggled through her high, John sucking his fingers into his mouth, Anna put both hands on his chest. She maneuvered backward, the mechanics of the motion requiring a bit of John's help to get the angle right, but sank down all the same. The mutual groans at the difference almost brought Anna right back to the edge she did not realize she could reach so quickly again.

He struck deeper from this position, almost reaching the end of her, and Anna interlaced their fingers to find support. John's hips thrust against her, establishing a gentle rhythm as if to guide her around the nuances of the position she just discovered. Soon she rocked against him, sliding herself up and down the length of him until her flagging energy left her bouncing and rocking desperately for that elusive pleasure John helped her find.

His fingers returned to her, stroking and caressing her breasts while pressing and rubbing insistently at her nerves until Anna huffed at the precipice again. Their chests met when John sat up, holding her tightly to him to thrust deeper and use his hand trapped between them to provide the pressure and friction they both needed. It was enough to bring Anna over the edge and she fell with her lips on John's.

The glow afterward, the room cooling under the onslaught of rain, held Anna in thrall. Her fingers danced and teased between his as they lay back on the bed together. Kisses exchanged back and forth until John finally brushed hair from her face and spoke softly.

"I'm sorry, Anna."

"Don't be sorry, not anymore." Anna's hand went to his face. "It's in the past and we're beyond all that now."

"You deserved better."

"I deserve you." Anna lifted herself onto her forearm, leaning over him. "And I have you. I believe I got exactly what I deserved."

John smiled, the backs of his fingers tracing her abdomen. "I think I got much more than I deserved."

"I think you got exactly what you deserved." Anna kissed him, resting her head on his shoulder. "And we'll have it together."


	14. Joyous News

Rain continued to patter on the roof, setting the tempo for the gentle caress of their fingers. John's traced the indentations of Anna's back, following the guiding lines of her shoulders, and occasionally pressed where she flinched or squirmed. She let her nails graze his skin between her fingers' track of the whorls and flow of the hair on his chest. Under her ear, pressed to the skin of his chest, the steady thump of his heart allowed Anna to doze.

"How soon so you want to get married?"

Anna frowned, turning her head to look up at John. "What?"

He shrugged, "Given that you're already pregnant then it's a little late to plan something large and frilly but perhaps Lady Mary-"

"I don't want anything big." Anna pushed herself up, moving to her stomach to prop her head up with her palm pressed to her temple. Her left hand, the once fake ring catching a bit of light from the light in the corridor as she continued running her fingers over his torso. "I never did."

"Then something small and intimate?" John allowed his fingers to continue a trace of her far shoulder, Anna bending her head to kiss at his wrist when he caught a bit of hair between his fingers. "Only a hundred people or so?"

"If we know a hundred people between us I'd be amazed." Anna smiled at him, "But no, it could just be the two of us at the Registrar's Office and-"

"I think here they use a Justice of the Peace or a Judge."

"Whatever they use," Anna dipped to kiss his cheek, pulling away before he could try to kiss her back. "We'll just have one of them do it."

"I'd regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't give you the right wedding."

"I'd much rather the right man than the right wedding." Anna sighed, moving her hand from him to cross in front of her body. "And we'll have to act quickly."

"Worried about a scandal?"

"I'm a nobody so the scandal I'd fear would be the one that would inevitably fall on Lady Mary and her house."

John snorted, "If we were worried about that then we should've taken precautions against illicit meetings on her property."

Anna swatted at him. "You know what I mean. To you and I it's nothing. We find a new place to live but Lady Mary… She'll be here for the rest of her life. The children under my care will be here until…." Anna let out a shaking breath, blinking at the threat of tears in her eyes. "I couldn't do that to them. They deserve better and, if I can, I should give them better."

"Do you think…" John's fingers paused on Anna's shoulder, tapping there for a second, "That, perhaps, Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins had the same talk?"

Anna shrugged, blowing out a puff of air. "I honestly have no idea. If they did, they didn't show me. But, at the end of the day, there wasn't much they could've done even if their employers had approved of the match."

"All that insanity about blacks and whites not being able to marry?"

"And the fact that Mr. Higgins was still married." Anna sighed, her mouth twitching toward a little smile. "I'm honestly surprised that you found yourself divorced. I thought I'd wait the rest of my life for it."

"It was… A miracle." John laid back, his focus going to the rain lashed window, now dripping and dibbling with the constant drips of the slowed but still steady rain. "It was as if she wasn't herself. She just… The first few days and even the first couple weeks she was her usual self. And then, one day, she just woke up and decided that she was being unreasonable. She signed the papers, we settled our debts, and that was that. All done and dusted."

Anna frowned, "On the off chance you decide I shouldn't be committed for my next suggestion, do you think she was possessed?"

"By a benevolent and benign demon?" John snorted, "I doubt it."

"No, by someone from here? Or, even, your own ancestors." Anna took her palm from her forehead to hold her body up on both of her forearms. "When you were gone I showed Mrs. Hughes the secret tunnel under the house. And when she was there, Green took possession of her body."

John's eyes widened and he pushed himself to sit up. "He did what?"

"It was the oddest thing. Not that I shouldn't have expected it since Ms. Cotton's done it to me but…" Anna shivered, "To have Mrs. Hughes's mouth saying those things… It was disturbing."

"Did he hurt you?"

Anna shook her head, "No. Just told me that he'll do all in his power to stop Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins being together."

"Making it the more odd that my wife, of her seeming own volition, decided to relinquish her hold on me?" Anna nodded at John's question and he sat back against the headboard, pushing his hand through his hair. "You think someone else did us the favor of stepping in while Mr. Green was distracted here?"

"Perhaps a spirit can't instigate possession in multiple places at once."

"I wouldn't consider myself an expert in spiritual possession and I've no interest in becoming one."

"Well," Anna shifted forward slightly, the sheets sliding down her back to offer John a view that made his nostrils flare and his eyes dilate. "I don't think we should consult an 'experts' in the matter either."

"Nor do I." John scoot sideways, sliding back down the bed so he lay on his side and could run the fingers of his right hand over her back again. "But I believe we were in the middle of a discussion about the necessity of swiftly impending nuptials before ghosts of the dead so rudely interrupted."

"Yes we were." Anna tilted her head to better look at John, running her finger down the length of his nose to tap the end. "You'll go find us a Justice of the Peace or a Judge or a Parson or whomever will agree to marry us as quickly as possible. You'll get the license and set a day. We don't have to tell anyone but you'll need to do this."

"You don't want anyone to know?"

"I didn't say that." Anna took a breath, "Mrs. Hughes already knows the situation in which I find myself and I'd rather not suggest a scandal to the house. I trust Lady Mary but there are ears about that aren't as friendly. They've can't cast suspicion if all the necessities are already sorted. Then it's just hearsay."

"Better to ask forgiveness than permission?"

"Exactly," Anna leaned toward him, her fingers moving into his hair to ruffle it a bit. "And since we don't actually have to ask permission anymore…"

"Did we ever?"

"If we worked for Lady Mary thirty years ago I'd think so." Anna used her grip on his hair to bring their faces closer. "We'd need everyone's permission."

"Then let's be glad we don't have to." John closed the distance to kiss Anna.

She smiled into the kiss, throwing her leg over John's hip to bring herself closer to him. John's hand slid down her back to hold solidly at her hip, giving Anna reason to sigh at the sensation of John grinding his growing arousal against her, and used his other hand to slide between them and run his fingers along her seam. Digging her fingers into John's shoulder to give herself leverage, Anna rolled her hips into John's fingers and broke their kiss to gasp and pant near John's ear.

His fingers moved deeper, crooking them inside her as his thumb pressed against her nerves. Both of them quivered against one another as Anna used her knee to bring herself even closer to John so her hips bucked against his hand and ground against his erection. Despite the rain cooling the intrepid heat of the region, sweat prickled and slipped over them, making maintaining a grip difficult. But Anna held tightly to John as his fingers pushed deeper, rubbed harder, and brought her to the edge while the heat of his breath ran over her skin.

They slipped and slid together, their panting breaths running hotter as they clawed at one another to regain their lost holds when friction increased and decreased in the irony of their exertions. But John added another finger and Anna clung to his skin as she tumbled over the edge he offered her. His hand almost left bruises on her skin where he held her tightly to him so the trembling aftermath of her climax would encourage and thicken his own growing need for her attentions. And it only took a slight adjustment for him to thrust inside.

Even with the lack of mobility and the considerably narrower focus of his drives, Anna reveled in the feeling of him. Sensations and imagination ran hand in hand as she considered everything and nothing in a single instant. Women, in whatever bit of the universe they occupied when they viewed it in terms of the eternal now that left all memory and forecasting at their fingertips, spread all possibilities out before them with little to no encouragement. Arguments long thought dead and buried are resurrected in an instant while planning for events not even fully materialized will happen in a second. For Anna, in the instances between John's determined thrusts in their tight but shallow position, allowed her to see the world they might have together.

She saw the vague images of their children. The one she could have, wanted to have, already planned names and careers and bedrooms for. The girl with golden hair and his somber eyes. The boy with his hair and her brighter eyes but with a brooding, quiet demeanor to match his father. A girl to match the image of John and be the apple of his eye. Or perhaps a boy with golden hair she would name after John despite how much he would argue against such a plain appellation.

Fingers dug deeper to hold tighter to bring them closer and Anna's mind flashed on other images. She saw candles and a bed with blood on the sheets. Heard the cry of a child and blinked when it bore the mulatto skin that seemed a few shades of lighter chocolate than the darkness of the hands that took the squalling baby. Hands she recognized as holding her own. Hands that belonged to Ms. Cotton when she first held the child she and Mr. Higgins made in her arms.

John's harsh breath against her neck, the buck and snap of his hips against hers, the grapple of his fingers and her hands to try and bring her attention back to the present were nothing as the images scattered and blurred in her mind. That tempting peak of pleasure beckoned at the corners and back of her mind, begging her full attention to the moment of pleasure so infrequently shared with John and so desired. But the image of her child morphing and fading into the boy that grew only large enough to occupy a drawer instead of an apple box before Ms. Cotton left him in the care of the Grantham family in New Jersey tore at Anna's heart.

Tears pricked her eyes and Anna buried her face in John's shoulder, her fingers scraping and marking his scalp and shoulders in an attempt to bring peace to the feelings of loss, regret, and eternal sorrow mingling with her body's reactions to John's efforts. Efforts that dragged both tears and cries from her as his fingers endeavors to replicate his earlier attentions to her body and bring her over the edge again. Anna fell, the overwhelming tumult of emotions leaving her almost oblivious to John's own fall as they sagged and held together.

Anna's fingers marginally loosened their hold on him, the roil of emotions settling slightly but not allowing her to forget the images. Her swirled her fingers in John's hair, carding through it to ruffle the locks even further so portions of it fluffed and stood on end, but forsook her hold to lay back on the bed. The back of her hand wiped sufficiently at her eyes and she thought John would not catch the motion, consumed as he was coming down from his own high, but the betraying sniff she gave as she blinked to clear her eyes brought John's attention to her in a second.

"Anna, are you alright?"

"I…" Anna blew the air from her lungs, trying to sort through the feelings that were hers and those that belonged to another woman. Another woman trying to tell her something without realizing the need for boundaries. "I don't know."

"What happened?" His fingers moved in her hair, stroking through the strands available to him in a gentle tug on her scalp that calmed the residual confusion in a way Anna could not have predicted but desperately wanted to replicate. "Where'd you go?"

"I was… I was imagining our children." One of her hands settled over her abdomen, John's hand joining hers to run softly over the skin there as if they could feel life growing inside her. "When you were inside me I thought… I thought about them. I thought about what life would be like when we had them."

"And that made you cry?"

Anna shook her head, wiping her eyes again as the seep of affection and sorrow from Ms. Cotton's memories invaded again. "It made me very happy."

John gave a little laugh and Anna joined him, even if the ridiculousness of the situation and her reaction was still partially unclear to him. "In my experience, one doesn't usually cry when they're happy."

"Sometimes they do."

"These don't seem like happy tears to me." John turned onto his side, ensuring his right leg stayed elevated over his left. "What else happened Anna?"

"I saw Ms. Cotton's child. Jack Ross's ancestor."

John frowned, "Was it particularly distressing?"

"I felt… I felt what she did. When she delivered him and then left him."

"Oh." John settled, offering his arms for Anna to move toward him so they could snuggle closer to one another. "I hadn't considered that."

"She was… She was so happy. He had her eyes, skin lighter than hers, and hair more like hers but there were the little details. His eyebrows, the cheekbones, his nose, and even the jaw line were all Mr. Higgins'." Anna wiped her eyes yet again, "And I don't even know how I know that. It's like… Like I know that she knew that when she looked at the life they created together. A life he never got to see."

"A life she never saw again?" Anna nodded against John's chest, her fingers returning to her earlier exploration of his skin. "She wanted you to feel that?"

"It's the only answer I have for it."

"Why?" John's chin rested gently on the crown of Anna's head as his fingers ran through her hair and down her back, as if to soothe her through gentle and consistent touches. "What more could she have to tell you?"

"That perhaps it's not over." Anna closed her eyes, scrunching them closed as another emotion overwhelmed her for a minute. "I'm tired of her using me like this."

"How'd you mean?" John pulled back, to see Anna, but she pushed herself away to push her palm almost violently against her eyes in an attempt to stop further tears. "Anna, it's alright."

"It's not alright, John. It's not bloody alright." Her fists impacted the mattress, having little impact on the surface and bouncing almost comically to negate the seriousness of her intent. "I was thinking about our children, having a moment with you, and she interjected her emotions again. She… She stole that moment from me to show me something of hers. It's not right."

John sat up, managing his leg so it stretched out, and took Anna's hands. "I can't pretend to understand what that's like, to lose yourself to something-"

"I didn't lose myself." Anna almost took her hands from his grip. "She steals them from me. As if she wants to take my happiness to supplement her own."

"And you think she doesn't want your happiness?"

"I think she wants my happiness to reflect her own. She's a voyeur and a thief, taking my life for her own since hers ended so violently and suddenly." John stayed silent, granting Anna a moment to think and assemble her thoughts. "She wants what I have and wants it the way she might've had it. She doesn't want me to have this life for myself."

"Maybe that's not what she means to do."

"It's what she's done."

John chewed the inside of his cheek before speaking again, "What if it's more of her wanting to communicate with you but not having the words or the language to do so? What if she's doing what she can because she doesn't know better?"

"She speaks English, John. And I've seen her so I would think if she had something to tell me she could do so."

"Perhaps she believes that showing you intimate moments of hers gives her the right to intrude on moments of your own."

"I never asked for that."

"I know," John held up a hand and Anna tried to calm the rising in her voice and slow the speed of her heart in her swiftly rising chest. "I know that you didn't go looking for this. I know you didn't want this. I… That's all I know."

"I don't want her here." Anna pointed to her head. "I don't want what she's given me because it's not a gift. It's a curse and I want it gone. I want my life to be my own without ghosts and apparitions and possessions and intrusion of hundred-year dead ghosts waiting to encroach on my life anymore."

"Then perhaps we can ask her to leave."

"Do you believe she'd respect the boundaries that would mean?"

"It's worth a try at the very least." John held Anna's hands in his again, running his thumb in strokes over her knuckles. "Perhaps we're close to solving her problem and ours."

"How'd you mean?"

"Vera's gone, we're getting married, and we've got a child on the way." John shrugged a shoulder, "It's possible that we're already living the life she wanted and it's not so much about righting the wrongs of the past but of having a bit of jealousy?"

"There's something very petty about the dead being jealous of the living." Anna sighed, squeezing John's hands back. "And I'd not count all of our chickens before they're hatched. I won't have us thinking it's all ship shape and Bristol fashion until it's all done."

"I understand." John brought the backs of her hands to his mouth, kissing the skin there. "I want you to be happy, Anna. I want to be happy with you and I'll do whatever it takes to guarantee that for you."

"You already do." Anna put one of her hands alongside his cheek, moving toward him over the bed. "You already make me so very happy."

"Good." John lay back, bringing Anna with him so her cheek took its place over his heart and his fingers took up their play over her back and through her hair again. "Then, perhaps, you'd like to make me happy."

Anna snorted a laugh, poking at his side so he flinched. "And how's that?"

The steadily somber tone of his voice almost frightened her, his fingers stopping on her skin. "Tell me about our children. About the way you saw them."

Anna smiled against his chest, turning to kiss over his heart. "Well, I imagined a little girl with my hair and your eyes."

"Your personality, I'd imagine."

"It'd match when we have a son with your hair and my eyes. A little brooder with a quiet personality that would make me love him all the more for how much he'd want to be just like you."

"Heaven help us all."

Anna only sighed against his skin, shaking her head. "There was another little boy, blonde hair though."

"More like you?"

"Maybe a little more mischievous but very clever." Anna took a breath, "And a little girl with your hair and the apple of your eye."

"They'd all be the apple of my eye." John held her close to him, kissing over her hair. "They'd be you and me, how much more could I want?"

"I don't know." Anna pushed herself up to kiss him. It lingered, their lips parting to taste one another for a moment. She broke the kiss. "Can I ask something?"

"Anything." John's eyes dilated slightly and Anna swallowed to try and ease the blood rushing in her ears. "I'd do whatever you ask."

"Can you kiss me like that… anywhere else?"

John's nostrils flared slightly and he forced himself to swallow so hard it bobbed his Adam's apple. "It'll be a little different than how I'd want to do it."

Anna frowned, "How do you mean?"

"Before… Before what happened to my leg, I would put himself between your legs and taste you until you were nothing but gelatin under me but I can't support my weight the same way anymore." John took another deep breath, his chest expanding so much it pushed Anna up. "But if you're willing to… take a different position, I can manage it."

"Yes." Anna hurried to say, the flush in her cheeks bringing some of the heat from her ears. "I mean-"

John kissed her, his hand holding along her jaw while his other cupped the back of her neck to manipulate her as he willed in their kiss. The maneuver had her lips and mouth following his leads and commands but Anna submitted to the onslaught. Different than their passionate and fiery kisses as these promised something far different than he ever offered before. These served as prelude and spoiler for his intentions and abilities in terms of answering her request.

When John pulled away, Anna reached for him, wanting to continue the kisses that left her lightheaded and desperate for him. But he only smiled and slid himself down the bed. The sheets rumpled and bunched at the foot of the bed as John craned his head back to make whatever calculations he needed to determine the distance between his head and the headboard was sufficient for whatever he had planned to serve Anna's request.

"Put your legs on either side of my head."

"What?"

John only grinned at Anna's sudden onset shyness. "You'll have to perch over me since I can't kiss you the way I'd like."

"But if I do then-"

"Like earlier, when you straddled me. You'll just be higher up my body." John put his hands on her thighs, nudging them apart so his fingers could start to tease at her. Anna rolled into the caress of his fingers, more familiar now than they were and a sensation she wondered how she ever lived without. "Come Anna, I want to taste you and you want to be kissed."

"I don't…" Anna closed her eyes, unable to look at him as she spoke. "I don't want to do it wrong."

"The only way to do it wrong is to not have pleasure from it." John dragged his fingers through her folds and back to his mouth to lick. "Trust me Anna."

She maneuvered, holding the headboard for security, and almost held her breath as she situated herself as John guided her. His hands moved over her skin, soothing her only slightly. Her legs trembled as she held herself above him, too nervous to hear his soft tone. It took his raised voice to have Anna look down at John.

"It'll be alright."

"John-" Before Anna could argue or consider moving or suggest it was a mistake and she regretted the petrifyingly mortification that overwhelmed her, John's hands steadied on her hips and pulled her down to his mouth.

Any arguments to the contrary were immediately lost.

Her fingers tightened their hold on the headboard, her knuckles translucently white in the blue-black light of the night through the window with the faint glow of yellow from the corridor. Anna forced herself to focus on the intricate carving of wood before her. Shadows obscured the patterns but it dug into her palms when she clutched tighter to it as John's tongue strove deeper inside her.

The run of his calloused hands over her thighs and abdomen had her sighing into his hold, rocking as much as she risked to keep herself enjoying the pleasure of his touch. But her eyes flew open when John risked a hand higher to hold at her breast. Her gaze fell to his, their eyes meeting as his glinted before he dragged his tongue over the length of her folds, and Anna rolled her hips faster, grinding against John's mouth to better enjoy the sensations of him between her legs.

Tingling pleasure ran through her blood like fire, boiling it enough to leave her completely unashamed as her hands joined the one John dedicated to kneading and massaging her breasts. Anna caught the flash in John's eyes, the almost indescribable darkening of color there at her actions, and gave over to matching the motions he left as guidance on the breast still in his grasp. And when her other hand slid over her body to joins his tongue in bringing her to the edge, John's assault on her core went ravenous with a frenetic attempt to ravish her while guiding her through the finer points of seeking her own pleasure.

Their fingers joined, John sacrificing his stabilizing hold at her hip to allow her to explore and lead her to where she would find the most satisfaction. Their hands still moved over her breasts and Anna's sounds moved from whimpers and moans to keening cries that reverberated off the walls around them to echo in her ears. And the wet, sucking sounds of John's mouth paying as much attention to her body as he did to her mouth drove Anna's fingers to work faster over herself. John's hand returned to her hip to better guide her bucking motions and kept her in place to allow him to drink through her orgasm.

Anna sagged forward, holding to the headboard and cutting new indentations in her hands. Her knees wobbled as she settled them into the mattress and held herself in place as John's kissed moved from her nerves to the end of her. When they started up her back Anna arched into them and almost purred as he followed the contours of her spine to cover her shoulders with his kisses before repeating the motions over her neck.

She pressed back toward him, the heat from his body sliding over her skin again as John's hands settled on her hips and then sculpted down to her swollen and soaked folds. His fingers teased there, barely touching her but leaving enough of an impression to bring her legs apart and allow him to scoop behind her. Anna turned slightly, her hand on his knee, but Jon shook his head and kissed her gently. Or his intention was to kiss her gently but Anna tasted herself on his lips and dragged him deeper into her mouth.

In the next moment the kiss broke as Anna cried out at John's entrance. One of her hands continued to hold tightly to the headboard, the other digging into the flesh of his thigh as he held himself still inside her. They did not move until Anna's hips shifted to settle him deeper. Then John grasped her hips harder, pulled them both up slightly so they rested their weight entirely on their knees, and dragged himself almost completely free of her before driving back to bottom out.

Anna's head went back, resting on John's shoulder as she flailed her body to match the rhythm of his hips. The sticky slide of skin, from sweat and the combination of their evening exertions, only worked friction further to force them together faster, harder, and deeper with the effort to achieve their ends. But the position of their bodies offered a host of entirely new sensations and Anna's body vibrated with the energy produced from the stroke of John moving past all the places that left her squirming and satisfied against him.

Their hands met, fingers tangling and intertwining, at her center and brushed against him as they sought to help Anna come over the edge together. His other hand reached around, taking her breast in hand again and Anna arched to try and achieve both ends of his touch. The grip of her hand on the headboard provided her the leverage she needed to shove herself back onto him, efficiently meeting the piston of his hips to feel him thicken inside her.

The harsh rise in his breathing was all she needed before John groaned into her shoulder. His fingers and hands were less focused and a little more frantic as his body stuttered through the end of his climax but he helped Anna find hers. Their cries mixed and mingled in the air as they stumbled and slid back to the bed.

Even in the heat, they lay entangled as Anna used clawed fingers to drag hair back from her face and off her neck to prevent it sticking there with sweat. John's lips kissed over her sweaty skin and Anna ran her fingers up into his hair to bring his mouth to hers. They sighed into one another's kiss before breaking to breathe. Their foreheads pressed together a moment before they disentangled themselves to lie on the bed and attempt to cool.

There was no coolness to be found but they both fell into a doze all the same, their fingers interlaced as the only parts of them capable to holding together in the heat. John's deep breathing sent Anna to sleep and she dreamed. Her own dreams and with no interference.


	15. Necessary Truths

She wrung at her fingers as she sat with John in the chairs outside the small office. Shadows moved across the frosted glass but only muffled noises could be heard from the other side, which only made her twitch at each small noise seeming to come in their direction. John's hand settled over hers before he forced his fingers between the knot of her own to hold more tightly to her. Anna turned to him and his easy smile comforted her until the door opened with a bang and she jumped in her seat. John's other hand came toward her, resting on her shoulder to try and stop the ferocious thudding of Anna's heart.

It barely helped.

"Sorry about that." The man gruffed as the shine from his bald head catching the electric lights in a harsh glow. He frowned at the paper in his hand, "John Bates and Anna Smith?"

John wrapped his hand around Anna's, kissing the back of it as they stood, and faced the man. "That's us, sir."

"Then right this way." He beckoned them forward and Anna held to John's arm as they followed him into the room.

As they crossed the T-section of corridor, the heels of Anna's shoes clacking on the polished floor, another set of footsteps sounds toward them. Anna turned, frowning, and then broke into a smile. Approaching at a swift trot, Mrs. Hughes managed her handbag and a small bouquet of flowers that she thrust into Anna's hands before fixing John's tie.

"I do hope you two didn't think I'd let you get married without someone to wish you well."

"We'd hoped to make it as quiet as possible." John's fingers brushed over Anna's abdomen but Mrs. Hughes only raised an eyebrow at him.

"Mr. Bates, it may surprise you to learn but I know about the… surprise, before you did. If anyone would keep this all as quiet as possible, it's me."

Anna gave a little laugh before embracing Mrs. Hughes in a single-armed hug. "You've already been too kind to us."

"And I'll be kinder when I'm serving as one of the witnesses to this moment of matrimony." Mrs. Hughes poked her head through the door, "Ah, Mrs. Shackleton, right on time I see."

"At my age I've nothing but time to expend." The woman inside the room answered and Mrs. Hughes shuffled their trio in to where the bald man maneuvered himself into his black robe. The rail of a woman, with a faced cragged with time and smiles, stood and held her hand out to them. "Prudence Shackleton, local elderly and stand0in witness."

"Thank you for being our witness." John shook her hand first before Anna did. "We've not got much family of our own and anyone willing to stand in is family of ours as far as I'm concerned."

"I do wish my nephew thought the same. He's always telling me that I'm interfering in people's private affairs here." Mrs. Shackleton shook her head, "But he's too busy with his car business to mind about things like marriage so I guess we're already at cross purposes, aren't we?"

Anna frowned, "Your nephew sells cars?"

"Yes, he's in business with Lady Mary Crawley's brother-in-law, in fact. They've worked together for some time."

"Henry Talbot's your nephew?"

Mrs. Shackleton blinked, "You know Henry?"

"He was a guest at Downton Place for a bit. He and Mr. Branson left for Atlanta a few weeks ago."

Mrs. Shackleton cringed, "I thought that was a mistake. Lady Mary could use the help of Mr. Branson and my nephew's doing her no favors in taking the father of one of those children away. Children should be raised by their parents."

Anna opened her mouth but thought she saw Ms. Cotton in the corner, her head bent as if bearing a great weight. "Sometimes I think we give our children their best chance when we're willing to leave them in the hands of another."

"Do you think that's the case here?"

"No," Anna shook her head. "I'm the tutor and governess for the children and… I think that house rings a bit more full when the entire family is there."

"I think any home does." Mrs. Hughes cut in, nodding at the Justice. "I do believe he's ready for you to read your vows and start on your own family."

Anna nodded at both women as their took their seats in the front row of the tiny room. It only boasted a few rows of chairs to begin with but the rest were empty all the same. The lack of guests allowed the room to hold a kind of solemn recognition for the gravity of the moment. It also rang a bit sad, Anna thought as John held her hand in the crook of his arm and they paced the short distance to the lectern where the bald man's head shone like a light. Sad as they had no other family to invite to such an event. And sadder still when Anna blinked to see the shadowy incorporeal beings of Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins viewing the proceedings but unable to see one another.

Their short walk ended, Anna gripped John's fingers as they wrapped together around the bouquet Mrs. Hughes offered as her gift and waited for the Justice to begin. A quick chill ran through Anna's heart and, for a moment of pure madness, she wanted to run from the room. Her eyes flicked toward a corner and recognized, more with her soul than her eyes, the shroud of darkness carried by Mr. Green. He seethed there and Anna swallowed hard to push him away.

It only took John's fingers wrapping with hers, a view of the beaming Mrs. Hughes, and the Justice finally finding his words for Anna to cast Green from her mind. All that mattered, in the cacophony of sound she forgot the moment it touched her ears, was that John recited the words of his vows to her and she to him. That they slid their rings on the appropriate fingers and held one another tightly as if to sear them to their souls. And then the bid to kiss him.

For all the kisses she shared with John, Anna recognized the significance of this. It was not the passionate longing they exchanged before his divorce. Or the gratified ecstasy of his return. This was the calm, settled peace of a decision that put the world right. A decision that put them right with the world.

It lasted only seconds, public decency and propriety asking them to forestall the enduring embrace of private moments, but the delicate applause from their audience of three was enough. Anna could not stop her cheeks pinching in a smile to match the beam John managed without breaking his face in half in pure elation. She kissed him quickly again, the smooth metal of her rings sliding over his skin, and broke only to look in his eyes.

Tears edged there. The kind of tears that spoke of moments and dimensions where they met earlier, acted sooner, and made a home for themselves without the tragedy and sadness that punctuated so much of their lives together. But Anna's careful thumb wiped them away to replace the moment of regret with joy. The tears that trickled from his cheeks then, to brush away on the back of his large and able hands, matched those he wiped from her face. The mixture of their tears on his hand only made her want to hold him closer so they might mix themselves together.

But Mrs. Hughes and Mrs. Shackleton wanted to offer their congratulations, to shake their hands, to pass along needed and imperative advice, and finally to bask together in the glory of the moment, the beauty of simple ceremonies, and then to sign the certificate that the Justice insisted had to go out with the express post that day or else the marriage would not be legalized for another week.

It was a blur to Anna. What could she manage to care about when John's fingers interlaced with hers to clack their rings together? What could possibly trouble her when John was hers, forever and always? And what ghosts or shadows could cast bother in her way when she practically floated from the courthouse to the already sweltering roadside.

Even with autumn turning on its axis and the first hints of winter frost licking at the morning dews, the humidity continued to stifle in a soggy heat. Anna put her hand up to shade her eyes and blinked when she almost blinded herself with the bouquet. Mrs. Hughes laughed behind them and held out a hand for the flowers.

"If you don't need them, I'll take them."

"Actually," Anna noted Ms. Cotton, her form less defined in the bright sun, "I think I might have a use for them."

"Well, if you do then I'll be on my way." Mrs. Hughes dug into her handbag for her bus change. "I'm to remind you that you've both taken the day. Lady Mary won't have you back before dinner."

Anna swallowed, "I do hope she's not offended that we didn't invite her."

"I believe she understood the required privacy of the matter and wanted to give you both the time you needed to celebrate on your own. However," Mrs. Hughes raised a finger and then her arm to flag down the passing bus. "She's insisted on hosting a dinner to celebrate tonight. There's to be no argument as she thinks it might lighten the spirits of our otherwise dreary household at the moment."

"Then we'd be fools to refuse." John shook Mrs. Hughes's hand. "Thank you, again, Mrs. Hughes for coming. I don't know if we'd have picked anyone better suited to stand in as our family for something as special as this."

"It was…" She sniffed a moment, ruffling the interior of her handbag again to retrieve a handkerchief and dab at her eyes. "It was my very great pleasure. You're not the only ones without family and… We need to cling to one another."

Anna wrapped Mrs. Hughes in another hug, John's quick reflexes saving the bouquet she fumbled into his hands before endeavoring to execute the motion. Mrs. Hughes hugged her back and they waited a long minute before separating. Both women laughed as they dabbed at their eyes with the shared handkerchief.

"Mr. Bates isn't wrong." Anna held Mrs. Hughes's hands, ignoring the huff of the bus driver. "We couldn't have chosen a better family than you."

"I'm honored by that." Mrs. Hughes jumped with the rest of them when the harsh blow of the horn brought them back to the moment. "I'd best be off. Someone's got to manage that household and I'm afraid I've left no one more qualified behind in my place."

Anna and John waved her onto the bus and waited until it turned a corner out of sight before John tugged gently on Anna's hand. "I do hope you've not planned anything, Mrs. Bates, because I've a surprise."

"Only one thing." Anna shivered, despite the stick of seat already keeping her blouse firmly planted between her shoulder blades. "I do like the sound of that."

"Surprise?" John wrapped his arms around her waist but Anna shook her head, bringing a row of lines to his forehead. "Plans?"

"Mrs. Bates," Anna kissed him quickly before wrapping his left hand with her right and smoothing her thumb over his wedding band before pulling him along. "It won't take long, I promise."

"If it's errands-"

"More of a visit, really." Anna guided them through the town to the large church. But instead of going inside, they skirted it to find the sprawling cemetery stretching like ruins behind it. Anna held the flowers tightly and made her way to the small plaque on the metal gate.

"This is a bit foreboding," John's hand shook a bit in hers. "I do hope your gift to me isn't that you've already selected the plot where you'll lay my body."

"No," Anna traced the name and led the way through the gate. "We're just paying someone a quick visit."

They crossed through the uneven rows, skirting larger monuments to the wealthy of the town while trying to avoid stepping on the smaller slabs marking the headrests of those with only enough money to remember their names. Anna wove through toward the side of the cemetery, the older stones weathering so names and dates obscured to the point of being nothing more than notches in stone while the faces of angels or people no longer held faces.

John shivered again, "I've never liked graveyards."

"Afraid of ghosts?"

"Afraid of the statues." John pointed to one particularly avenging looking angel with spread wings and a sword ready to stab down toward the earth. "Have you ever wondered what you would do if one of those moved?"

"They're stone."

"They look like stone. But what.. what if they're only stone when you're looking at them?"

"And what? They turn into something else when you look away?"

"It sounds ridiculous but I could swear that once, when I was in Thailand, a statue moved when I stopped looking at it. Like it was stalking us." John's whole body seemed to ripple with the force of his shiver. "As if we'd offended it."

"Then we'll not offend these." Anna paused, reading the names she could and counting down a row of stones until she found the one she needed. "This is our stop."

"Who?" John joined her, their hands latching together. "Oh."

"Yes." Anna bent into her heels to lay the bouquet next to the stone before standing again. "I've been writing Mr. Ross and he said he found her here after we gave him all the information we could. Said, from his research, that the plot was paid for by the Grantham family but the service was organized by Mr. Higgins."

"Who's buried in the cemetery of my mother's church in Dublin." John nodded when Anna turned to him, "I… When I went back with Vera, I found his grave. She didn't understand but I… I had to meet him. Had to pay my respects."

"What did he say?"

"If he spoke to me, I wasn't listening carefully enough but…" John took a breath, his hand squeezing Anna's for a moment. "He's the one who gave me strength to finally leave Vera. To make sure it was all done and dusted this time. He's the one who pushed me back to you, I'm sure of it."

"Then I guess we both need to pay our respects." Anna traced her hand along the top of the stone emblazoned with the words, 'Anna Cotton. Loyal Friend, Loving Mother, Brave Soldier.' "For as much as I believe they've made our lives more difficult… I wouldn't call it a misery."

"Without them, we might never have been." John hugged Anna to him. "Now can we find someone a bit more… pleasant? I've got chills running down the same spine sweating through my shirt."

"Of course." Anna took his hand and they wended their way back to the gated entrance. "To think, a former slave buried in the same yard holding some of the most prominent slave families in this area."

"How'd you know that?"

"Like I said, Mr. Ross and I've been writing." Anna shrugged at John's expression. "If I'm going to live here, I should be aware of the history and the customs. I'd expect no less of myself if I lived in the Orient or the Continent."

"I'm not sure I'd want to live in Europe now." John shook his head, moving his arms out of his jacket and rolling the sleeves on his shirt. The jacket hung in the groove formed when he put his hands in his pockets and Anna held his elbow above that while his right hand firmly gripped the cane that steadied his walk. "It's war torn and fractured. Even with the war being almost two decades over it's… It's not a place where you can build easily anew."

"Can you do that anywhere?"

John shrugged, "Here you can. America'll always be the land of opportunity."

"That sounds very optimistic."

"There's a lot of America." John sighed, guiding them back to the main streets and weaving between the morning shoppers and workers hurrying to their jobs. "And it's the kind of place where you can make something for yourself, if not of yourself, within a generation. That's encouraging."

"I think the world is realizing that." Anna held closer to John's arm. "Do you want to stay here?"

John blinked at her, "I don't follow."

"To raise children, do you want to stay here?" Anna motioned with her other hand. "Perhaps not in Savannah forever but in America?"

"I've not got anywhere else that I call home."

"Your people are from Ireland."

"And your people are from Yorkshire but I don't get the feeling you want to go back there." John waited but Anna only nodded, "Besides, there's more for them here. The rest of the world's still remaking itself in a new image. Imagine what our children could build here."

"They'd lose their culture." Anna shuffled as they waited for the signal to cross the road. "It's why Lady Mary hired me in the first place. She didn't want the children at Downton Place to lose their heritage."

"Just because it'll be harder to keep it doesn't mean we can't keep it." John brought her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss there. "I believe we'll keep what matters most and we'll keep it safe."

"Then I'll lean on your faith for now." Anna went onto her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, "Now what's this about some surprise you've got for me?"

John grinned and pointed, "We've got ourselves a room, for the day, there."

"There?" John nodded and Anna covered her mouth, "How'd you ever-"

"Despite Vera's best efforts, she couldn't get her hands on the money my mother left me when she passed. It was… more than I expected but my mother was always a frugal person. She scrimped and saved and now I can offer my new bride a beautiful room for our first day as man and wife."

Anna could not decide on an emotion as a host of them ran through her at once. "You've made me… You make me so happy John. You've no idea how happy."

"If it's as happy as you make me then I've got a bit of one." John dramatically waved his hand toward the hotel. "Might we proceed Mrs. Bates?"

"I believe we should. No use in letting the room go to waste."

"In another life I'd offer you a week for a honeymoon. We'd make our way somewhere off the beaten track and we'd just be with one another."

"I think I can manage a day if I get to spend it with you."

They crossed the street, entering the hotel for John to give his name to the host, and followed the bellboy up the stairs to their room. After the exchange of a few coins for the help, John opened the door to show Anna the interior of the room. Gawping together giggling at the sight of the other's dropped jaw, they explored the room letting in bright sunlight while fans beat the air to keep it from stifling in the corners or suffocating the occupants.

Anna traced her fingers over the dark wood table and the matching chairs with deep red cushions. She noted John peeking his head into the little washroom with a satisfied sound before he took to exploring the wardrobe. A short pace of the room allowed her a view from the window to see the street bustling with life despite the growing oppression of heat. But she turned at the slight creak of bed springs. They both laughed again as John lay back on the bed, intentionally pressing himself into the mattress to test its expansion.

"Much more comfortable than my bed in the cabin."

"Any bed I'll share with you is fine by me." Anna sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over to drag her finger over the lines of his face. "I agree, however. This bed is much more comfortable than the one in your cabin."

"But it's not as if we could hope to share that coffin of a bed in your room."

Anna huffed, "It's larger than a coffin, thank you very much."

"Not by much."

"Spent much time in coffins, have you?"

John laughed, kissing at Anna's fingers. "Have you eaten?"

"I was too nervous this morning."

"Nervous?"

Anna shrugged, "So many things in our lives have… failed to go as planned or desired. I…"

"You thought this might be like that?" Anna nodded but John only interlaced their left hands so their rings could clink together. "No need to fear anymore."

"You're right." Anna leaned over, kissing John's lips. She tried to draw back but John's hand snaked to the back of her neck to keep her lips on his. Both of them moaned and Anna took advantage of the opening in John's mouth to sneak her tongue in to swirl around his.

John only broke the kiss when neither of them could breathe evenly. They stared at one another for a moment before he swallowed. "Are you hungry now?"

"Only for you." She grinned when his pupils dilated and his nostrils flared. "What might you have in mind to solve that problem?"

"A few things." John brought their mouths together again but Anna broke the kiss to let out a whimper when his other hand smoothed his way up her thigh to draw a line from her pantyhose and knickers. "If you're amenable."

"I do believe I am." Anna opened her legs slightly, letting out little pants as John's fingers curled under the elastic line of her knickers to tease at the crest of her clit. "What do you have in mind?"

"A great many things." John turned onto his side, his hand leaving her to tug at her shoes. They dropped to the ground and he toed his off on the other side of the bed, his socks bunching and catching before Anna leaned over to yank them free. When she did, it left her legs open enough for John to work his fingers back to her and Anna shivered at his reapplication of motion. "We've the whole day to use this bed to our advantage."

Anna moved, their odd yin-yang positioning allowing her access to his buckle and trousers but the angle forced her elbows into the mattress to both hold herself aloft and to try and attack the sudden complexities of a simple zipper. John's task, from his little grunts and snuffles of annoyance, was no easier as he tried to tug her skirt free or unbutton her blouse and they both almost gave up in exasperation. A moment of adjustment had them sitting up to face one another and it paused them.

Paused the fervor, the aching necessity, and the momentum. John's hand came up, gently cupping around Anna's face, and he took a deep breath before bringing their lips together. Anna's hands mimicked his, framing his face along the lines of his jaw and his cheekbones, to control her half of the kiss long enough to bring John toward her. He resisted and broke the kiss, surprising Anna with his deft divestment of his shirt and trousers so only his pants were left to speak to the level of desire he displayed.

And Anna's breathing hitched when she recognized that it was for her. He was hers now, as the ring on his finger proclaimed to the world. His desire was hers, his body was hers, his soul was hers, his heart was hers… As all those things in herself were his. So when she reached a hand forward to hold the evidence of want for her, Anna relished the groan it brought from John.

They managed the awkward hip lift and shuffle required to divest him of the last of his clothes, and the second of delay it took for John to cast his pants aside, Anna already had her hand squeezing at him. Stroking motions to match the way his hand sculpted back up her leg gave way to frantic pulls when his fingers tugged her knickers free from under her skirt.

Anna lay sideways on the bed to help John remove her knickers and stockings but it also put his erection close to her mouth. A temptation she could not ignore. And one that had her smiling into the whimpering groan John gave as her tongue swirled the tip of him to explore the slit there. His hips bucked in time with the growl he emitted when her tongue swathed the underside of him to trace the beating artery there.

But John was not one to allow Anna all the fun. His dexterous fingers, so skilled at crafting unforgiving wood into shapes only he saw, now eased her blouse from her, let her skirt fall over the side of the bed, and immediately whipped her slip over her head in a momentary pause of her oral attack on his arousal. An attack he paused when his hand lifted her thigh and he buried his tongue between her legs.

Gasping for air, her nails digging into John's thigh to try and ground herself in a reality she was sure no longer offered her any kind of support, Anna opened her legs further to allow John's tongue to continue its deep dive between her folds and into the channel he then used his fingers to explore and pry open. She squirmed and keened at his attentions before a part of her brain whispered hints about the perfect revenge. About the way to pleasure him to match the lances of ecstasy now racing through her blood.

Reapplying her mouth to him, Anna used her fingers to hold and glide along the length of him she should not reach with her mouth. Her other hand, giving up her claw-like grip on his leg, moved between his legs to coax a grunt of surprise when she held the hanging weight there. His efforts only increased when she fondled and squeezed in time with her other motions. It was a race to the finish but John's determination, his insistence at any miniscule falter in Anna's progress, had her clenching around his fingers and her thighs tightening around his head as her body rode through the orgasm he encouraged.

Drifting back slightly onto the bed, Anna let a lazy smile take over her face when John lifted himself enough to kiss out from between her legs and at her hip. The shift in his position, and the touches he continued to press on her that only encouraged her body to fizzle back to life, had Anna sitting up slightly. She leaned over, interrupting John's adoration of her skin to take his lips. Her position pushed him back into the bed and John sank willingly into the mattress.

Anna wished she could see the surprise on his face when she straddled him. But with his legs half off the bed, and the position their bodies already occupied, Anna put her back to him as she settled on his abdomen. The hot weight of his erection pressed against her frazzled nerves, sparking them to life even faster than John's delicately orchestrated touches, and Anna glided herself against him to watch as his heavy arousal split her folds.

John's groan from behind her was all Anna needed to scoot herself forward on her knees and find the appropriate angle to sink onto him. Fingers dug into her hips, bruising instantly with the determination in the grip, but Anna used the flash of pain to fuel her pleasure as she rocked into her knees to begin rising and falling over him. The slick slide of him, coated from her mouth and steadily with the weeping results of his mouth on her, struck deeper and deeper into her until Anna had to pause to moan when he sank to the hilt inside of her. Her hips rolled, trying to contemplate the exquisite rapture of their position.

Then she moved again.

The hint of a burn in her thighs and knees forced Anna to adjust her position and motions. Gyrations of her hips, mixing with determined thrusts from John's well-coordinated hands and hips, left them both groaning incoherent half-words and unintelligible phrases. But when she rolled her hips, rocking back into the snap of his hips, Anna gasped out as John's chest slapped against her back.

His arm wrapped around her abdomen, his fingers pressing and rubbing toward where they joined to coat his fingers in the results of their exertions, and shifted so his feet hit the floor. The strength in the thump of feet on wood almost distracted Anna but when John could now use the leverage of his feet to drive his hips harder into her, Anna let out a shriek to accompany the friction of John's fingers. Fingers that abandoned her hips entirely so he could massage her breasts and caress her skin with all the delicacy of someone seeking to communicate the depth of affection with every touch.

Anna gave over to it, her head going back to John's shoulder so his lips could leave sloppy, wet kisses along the length of her neck. Her nails dug grooves into the skin at the back of his neck when he increased the piston of his hips to take her tantalizing pace and turn it into an almost punishing pound. But each deep thrust only brought them closer and closer to the edge. An edge Anna fell over first and then John followed as the strangling cling of Anna's vaginal walls offered him no escape. So he drove until his body should only stutter and shudder under her.

They lay back on the bed, still connected and intertwined until the risk of sticking together with the sweat the beat of the room's fans could not dispel, and glided their fingers over whatever skin they could reach. Eventually Anna pushed herself up, twisting to face John. He smiled lazily at her and Anna bent over to kiss him, spinning it out as slowly as possible until the need for air forced them apart.

She brushed hair from his forehead and sighed, "I believe I'm hungry for food now Mr. Bates."

"And what," One of his hands trickled his fingers over her hip, "Would you like, Mrs. Bates?"

"I believe it's the custom for the married couple to have cake but, otherwise, I'm actually rather partial to the southern breakfasts."

"Then that's what we'll have." John's grin widened, "But after I've time to recover my strength a bit. You've rather had your way with me."

Anna blinked, a memory from Ms. Cotton's life flashing through her mind for a moment. "What?"

"Just now, you-"

"Right." Anna forced a smile, taking John's hand with hers as if to reassure herself of the ring there. The ring marking him as hers before the law. "I rather did, didn't I?"

John beamed, "You can have me any time you like."

"Good, because I plan to have you a few more times here… If we can manage it." Anna bit at her lip, noting the twitch and slight rise of John's arousal. "Although I believe we should both eat something before we continue."

"I quite agree." John pushed himself up on the bed and reached for his cane to stride toward the water closet. "Give me a few minutes and I'll see what the front desk has in terms of food and cake."

Anna lay back on the bed, watching her husband move about the room. "At your leisure, I'm rather enjoying the view."

John caught her staring and gave her a leer of his own. "Minx."

"Tempter." Anna waved him into the water closet. "The sooner you finish there, the sooner we eat and then move on to… other endeavors."

"Don't be coy now."

"We're in a nice hotel," Anna put a hand to her chest. "I'd like to act the lady here, if only a little while."

John blew her a kiss, "You're a lady to me. And I've never met a finer one."

"You always say that to me."

"Because it'll always be true." John shut himself in the water closet and Anna lay back on the bed, smiling herself into a light doze.


	16. Beautiful Restitutions

She ran her finger through the frosting and offered it to John. He licked at it and then engulfed her finger in his mouth. Anna shivered and keened at the swirl of his tongue over her finger and withdrew it slowly to go for another swipe of frosting.

From her perch on his chest, John sprawled back with his hands behind his head, Anna could gaze down at him. The power of her position enthralled her and she only abused it with the occasional brush of her ass against his rising arousal… just to see the twitch in his jaw and the way his eyes rolled back into his head. But mostly she used her position to feed John pieces of the frosted chocolate cake he managed to procure for them to enjoy.

"Where did you find something this decadent on such short notice?" Anna offered him another dollop but whisked it away at the last minute, sucking it off her finger with a wag of her eyebrows and a devious smile. She squealed when he moved a hand to pinch lightly at her thigh. Her attempt to squirm away only encouraged him to stroke along her leg.

"There's a little bakery just around the corner owned by a lovely French couple who, as luck would have it, made a sample wedding cake for a potential wedding but the bride didn't want to risk chocolate with a white dress."

"Her loss is our gain." Anna went to offer another lick of frosting but John's finger grabbed for it himself. Instead of eating it, he sat up to spread it over her abdomen and then leaned over to lick at it. Anna shivered and moaned when John's tongue trailed higher toward her breasts and his fingers teased at the crux between her legs in time with the run of his tongue on her skin.

"Are you alright darling?" His other hand smoothed around her hip, massaging at Anna's ass as she writhed under the care of his fingers between her legs. "You wouldn't want to spread that cake or its frosting over these lovely sheets."

"Then you," Anna scrunched her eyes closed to try and focus, "Shouldn't distract me, dear."

"Perhaps you shouldn't be so distracting." One of John's fingers managed to fit inside her, maneuvering in her tightness to glide over her nerves.

Anna leaned into his hold, setting the cake aside with more difficulty that she thought possible for so simple a task, and held herself above John as he opened her further by adding another finger. With the last of her shattering focus, Anna secured another run of frosting on her finger and used it to trace the lines of John's face. He paused under the surprising assault but then applied himself with more dedication to his task at her core when Anna used the lines of frosting as guides to kiss over him. Another spread of frosting followed the first and Anna traced it over his chest until John's thumb added to the work of his fingers and brought her to the edge of climax. One he achieved when the right tweak of her nipple forced her head back from his skin. The open angle gave him full access to her breasts and he sucked the same nipple into his mouth while sliding a third finger inside her.

Shaking and quivering around him, Anna's nails dragged over John's shoulder as she tried not to cry out at the sensations running rampant through her body. John's insistent fingers, pulling and crooking inside her, only fed the racing conflagration and Anna could not keep silent. John's mouth continued at her breast but Anna groaned at the smile that widened his lips over her skin. A smile that persisted when she huffed and whimpered to another finish he fed from her first.

John finally released her breast and maneuvered them to lay Anna back on the bed where she twitched and heaved for breath. He maneuvered himself over her, careful of his leg, and Anna tried to pull him to her. But John stayed just out of reach, bending only at the neck to put his lips to hers. She pulled at him, her arms going around his shoulders, tried to manipulate him where she wanted by notching her leg over his hip but John proved as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar and broke their kiss.

If Anna thought it was punishment, the fingers she curled into his hair when he traced frosting over her breasts to lick and suck there until her skin was nothing but a mass of red proved otherwise. His painting skills were nothing compared to his masterful carving but Anna could only writhe and undulate as he took his tracings further and further, eventually abandoning the sugary confection to lick at her unadorned.

His fingers and tongue proved their mastery of her until Anna's palms pressed hard into the mattress to try and lift herself from it. As if she could somehow comprehend the incalculable rapture he offered her. But all her movements did was open her legs further, allow John to explore deeper, and give him the access he needed to leave her a trembling mess when she came over the edge again.

Only then did John move toward her. Her fingers scrabbled lifelessly over his skin, trying to find purchase but her mind hazed and she could barely form a coherent thought. All Anna could do was lift her leg higher, shift into his hold when his hand clamped on her thigh and opened her wider, and then clutch desperately to him as he sank into her.

They held still, their very bones vibrating with the effort of exulting in their embrace, and then John moved. Slow, even strokes that ran to the very end of Anna and sheathed him to the hilt inside her. Then he ground against her, shifting and searching for those places that had her clinging to him with her fingers and her internal walls. But for all of John's patience, his earlier efforts left Anna wet and sucking at each retreat so every thrust gained speed and a degree of fanaticism that left John working his hips like a piston into her.

Anna dug her nails into his skin, adding a layer of raking claw-marks over his shoulder and grooves in the back of his neck. Her lips ran over his cheek when his forehead went to her shoulder as if to provide another point of contact when his frantic pace crossed from almost mindless thrusts to a primal drive. The sounds of them filled her ears, rang like harmony to the thunder of her blood and the distant reach of her own cries, and left her grasping at him inside and out. Even the punishing pound of his body into hers hollowed every emotion but those he evoked until the sweet release of climax took her.

John's finish followed shortly after, the run of his body over hers as the animal parts of themselves ran their course and relinquished their hold to allow the rational brain to set in again, and barely managed to contort himself alongside Anna. She held to him, the sweat on his skin leading her hands to slip as she gripped his forearm and elbow where it slung over her abdomen. His fingers lightly caressed there as their breathing evened and the beating of their hearts soothed.

Anna's fingers traced over John's arm, her grip loosening as her body calmed, and smiled to herself as she closed her eyes. A small snort from John had her turning to head to look at him, the grin breaking out on his face matching hers. She drew her finger down the line of his nose, tracing from his forehead to his chin, and leaned toward him so their lips could meet. Meet for a kiss that had Anna sighing into John's mouth as his tongue taunted along her lower lip before tangling with her own.

A kiss that John spun, with his hand along her jaw to aid in the control of his motions, until they both had to break for breath. Anna moved her lips to his cheek, tasting the residue of a bit of frosting there before sighing back into the pillows. "How long until we have to leave the little love nest we've built for ourselves here?"

"A few hours." John shrugged, laying back with one of his arms behind his head. "More than enough time for me to offer you a few more glorious opportunities."

"Oh?" Anna moved onto her side, the palm of her hand supporting her head as her fingers traced over his chest. "And what sort of opportunities does my husband have in mind?"

"The kind that you only find in salacious novels." John tried to deflect the swat Anna aimed for him. "You asked."

"I had hoped that you would use something a bit more… oblique."

"I don't need to speak in innuendos about my intentions where you're concerned any longer." John drew her hand toward him, kissing around the rings there. "I've already gone and married you."

"A mistake you might regret if you continue to suggest the contents of salacious novels to me." Anna rested her hand on his chest, pushing her weight on him for a moment to move back to her position from before, straddling his waist. "I may look naïve, but I've read more than a few."

"I could hardly accuse the women who first took me in a rocking chair in my woodshop of being naïve." John's free hand ran over the skin of her thigh, mirroring the actions that led to their exertions of only moments ago. "That woman knew quite a bit about the theoretical maneuvers between man and woman."

Anna bit her lip, "That wasn't how I knew, exactly. Not everything I've every experienced was theory, Mr. Bates."

"Should I be jealous of some farm boy in North Yorkshire or a strapping fellow from Guernsey?"

Anna shook her head, "My experience isn't anything about which you should be jealous. I'm not."

John's hand paused, "Anna-"

"No," Anna raised a finger and pressed it to John's half-open lips. "I admit, there's a story there I've not told you but I won't tell you now. That… shadow's staying firmly in the past, where it belongs. Like all of our shadows are."

"Are you speaking to me," John made a show of craning his head from his compromised position, "Or to the possible voyeurs of our afternoon's discovery?"

"I'm speaking to any and all who might, for any reason, decide that they'll intrude on a moment that's, entirely and completely, ours." Anna dipped down, putting her mouth just a hair's breadth from John's. "If you want, that is."

"What fool would refuse his lovely wife?"

"Not my fool." Anna's hand pushed back his hair, "Because you're mine."

"And you're mine." John tried to kiss at her arm but Anna seized control of his mouth as she shifted her hips backward to rub along the twitching evidence of another desire to rise. "Although you might be a widow as soon as you're a wife."

"That might make me the fastest widow on record," Anna moved her forearms to John's chest, maintaining her lean over him as her knees dug into the mattress to support her efforts to coax the hints of arousal back into him. "Why would you suggest something so macabre in our nuptial bed?"

"Because," John gritted his teeth as Anna shifted again, "You're going to prove the death of me, Mrs. Bates."

"Death by sexual encounter, imagine the scandal." Anna only grinned, grinding and rubbing herself faster on him, sighing at the slippery sensation of her body moving over his. "I'll never be able to show my face in this town again. I might even miss the funeral of my own husband. Can you picture it, the grieving widow too ashamed to stand at the graveside of her husband?"

"I can picture you all in black." John's hand tried to move up Anna's body but she escaped his reach so his fingers only delicately brushed at her breast. "If we'd had more time, I could've sought out any number of black pieces of attire for you that would… Leave little to the imagination."

"The benefit," Anna slithered down his body, pressing kisses from his neck to his chest to his abdomen before pausing, "Of those kinds of clothing is to remove them and we seem to have no trouble in that regard."

The pause in her motions left John's hips bucking into her as Anna ran her tongue through the grooves of his hips and toward his hardening erection. His fingers curled into the sheets when Anna dragged her nails along the length of him before circling his base with her tongue. And when she used her tongue to trace the folds of skin, John could only moan incoherently.

For as large as John was, Anna's brain logged the marvel of how easily she could leave him quivering and sighing under her. Little noises, not the kind a man of his size and resonance was expected to produce, came through his lips as he tried to quiet himself. They just made Anna try harder to convince him to leave the shyness behind. She knew her reputation as a demure lady was already shattered in the way she could no longer hear the volume or screech of her own cries of pleasure when John set his sights on her climax.

She craved these sounds. Proofs she could lock away and revel in when she considered that size was no contest in the battle for rapture. There was nothing he did to her that she could no match. Perhaps not with strength but with dexterity, with patience, and with a liberal use of her tongue. A use that left John almost whimpering as his fingers clutched at air and his body twitched and bucked helplessly underneath her assault.

The threat of the taste of him, the possibility of dragging from him the same reaction he so easily encouraged in her, almost left Anna with no recourse but to ignore John's half-formed mutterings and pleas. But the desperate grapple with her, one she recognized from her many attempts at its execution, forced her to draw back. To leave with nothing more than a final lick along the length of him, swirling slowly over his tip.

"Please… I…"

"What?"

"I…" John reached for her but the dagger's edge he walked left him with no alternative but to precariously bid her forward while holding himself in check.

Anna only climbed forward, pressing her knees into the mattress, and sank down on him. In their short tenure of experience, Anna could claim no mastery of the subject. But two thoughts managed to break through the primal bid to ride John like a racehorse seeking the cup of victory.

The first was that, like language, practice made one proficient and she planned to study this process to perfection. The second was that experience was nothing to experimentation and enjoyment. As long as she sought both, Anna grinned to herself as she executed a roll of her hips that left John's head digging deeply into his pillow, there was no way to do this incorrectly.

So she chose the route of the tortoise, determining that slow and steady would win the race. If nothing else, it might allow John the time he needed to regain the control he so desperately sought with every scrape of his blunt fingernails against her skin. Although, Anna closed her eyes as she rose and fell on John's thickening arousal, perhaps control was not what either of them truly wanted at the moment. Nor, perhaps, what they needed.

Inexperience did not allow Anna the range of motion she needed or the details on the dynamics of how to properly utilize her position above John to her advantage but, with her hands pressed to his chest, she urged him to meet her. Urged him to teach her. Urged him to join her where they might float to a high together and learn about one another in return.

Urgings that John did not fail to follow.

His fingers at her hips set a rhythm that Anna quickly learned and adapted to her needs. John's touches set her seeking the positions and depth she needed to continue those sensations, spinning them out until her mind flared with bright lights as if lack of oxygen or blood might starve her of any comprehension but that of their moment together. And his gentle instructions, half-formed through gritted teeth, had her murmuring equally cryptic responses until they allowed their bodies to speak for them.

Bodies that knew exactly what they were doing while the civilized mind could do naught but drag behind, amazed at what it learned. And Anna reveled in it. Reveled in the way her inhibitions flew, her desires rose, and the heady expression of every slot on the spectrum from lust to love and back again left her dazed and delirious with the presence of John.

Their high spluttered, reaching for the shore like a determined wave as they gave over to the dregs of pleasure remaining after their mutual climax, and Anna clumped onto John's chest. They shifted and slid, finding the positions their bodies preferred while their minds still struggled to catch up. And there they lay, curled and knotted around one another, as they returned to consciousness.

She shifted, pulling herself to the side and grimacing as the stick of sweat on her skin. Pushing herself to sit up, Anna leaned over to run a finger along John's chest. "Since you were the one to examine the water closet, do you know the size of the bathtub?"

"Any particular reason?"

"Other than trying to get clean?" Anna dipped her head to press a kiss to the center of his chest. "I thought you might like to join me. Save us time."

"I very much doubt we'll save time sharing a bathtub." John's fingers trilled up her arm, "But I'd be willing to arrange one for you."

"I've had more than enough baths on my own," Anna escaped John's attempt to hold her and walked backward toward the water closet. "I'd like to share one with my husband, if he's willing."

"Temptress." John pushed himself to the edge of the bed and grabbed for his cane to stride toward Anna. "You certainly know how to push a man to all limits of his delicate sanity."

"Do I?" Anna ducked his hand again, ensconcing them fully in the water closet before handling the knobs to send water burbling into the ceramic creation hoisted above the floor on clawed feet.

"You offer to share the bath," John hooked his cane over the lip of the sink and, before Anna could turn, placed his hands on the small of Anna's back to run over her skin. "And then you leave the bed without a stitch."

His lips brushed over her shoulders, "What's a man to do?"

"My mother would be horrified at my lack of impropriety." Anna shifted but John only moved closer to her, growling against her skin when his position allowed for the rub of his growing arousal against her ass.

"Then it's a good thing your husband rather prefers it." His teeth nipped below her ear, "I'd never have you wear clothes again if I could help it."

"Who's the tempter now?" Anna leaned forward, to turn the knobs on the tub, and only managed to grab the side of it when John's fingers ran between her folds from behind and his other hand pressed his palm to rub against her clit from the front. She twisted into the sensations, gasping out when John's fingers slid easily into her with the excess of lubrication her body provided in response to the veritable buffet of sexual experience.

"Can I take you like this Anna?" John's lips continued to caress and whisper over her skin while his fingers took far greater liberties. "Would you let me have you like this? Could I take you as you are?"

"Can…"

"Like earlier, on the bed."

"Or holding your headboard?" Anna grinned to herself, wondering if John's kiss to her cheek was his silent acknowledgement that he could see her expression. "You want me to not see your face?"

"I want you to trust that it's always me. Will forever be, me." John's fingers paused, holding her right on the edge. "It's your choice Anna. Always and forever, your choice."

"Then take me John because if you wait another moment-"

The alacrity of John's response did not even allow Anna's sentence to finish. Not that she could remember what she intended to use as a threat anyway as he answered her request swiftly. His fingers finished her, leaving Anna's knuckles white in her grip on the edge of the tub, and entered her without preamble. A single thrust had him to the end of her and Anna's back arched at the explosion of thrills running rampant through her body.

Her anatomy classes in school, prudish and basic, did not spend much time on the male form. Anything Anna knew about it came from her experiences with younger cousins, helping at the hospital on Guernsey, and her terrifying experience with the German soldier. Her own body was almost as much a mystery in terms of the martial pleasure she shared with John.

Visions from Ms. Cotton answered basic questions about the mechanics of the process but nothing about the internal dynamics of it. Her body, under John's tenaciously dedicated care, seemed a never-ending series of fuses and sparks that he could set ablaze with a few careful touches. Sometimes she wondered if perhaps his classes taught him more than hers had… especially when his fingers found those places on her that boiled her blood in a moment and sped the beat of her heart to a trampling cadence.

But his body… Anna was sure that it must work differently. Horror stories, whispered in innuendos, plagued her before her time on Guernsey and afterward she was sure that the time it took for John to bring her back to the ready was multiple times that of a normal man. The pleasure, for her, was fed internally and in an infinite loop but for him… Part of her wanted to say that it should not be possible for his body to be ready for hers so often and so quickly but he proved her wrong. With every push of his hips against her body to cradle her ass or grind himself deeper inside of her, Anna knew she must be wrong.

John's fingers were not idle and the run of his hand over her ass, around her torso, and up to her breasts brought Anna back to the moment. With his fingers tweaking her nipples and kneading the sensitive skin Anna realized that her attempt to divine a logic to the actions was irrelevant. All that mattered was John inside her, moving to find the perfect places to bring her pleasure, his hands on her and the two of them moving in harmony until her body tightened.

Every nerve in her seemed to coil, as if to spring forward on command, and waited only for the cue from the conductor. At the sign from John, the maestro of her form, Anna came. She fell into his waiting embrace and accepted his finish with the basic response of her body. They moved together in the dance older than speech until they could settle on shaking legs as their quivering muscles ran the gambit of expression before stilling.

Anna leaned forward, her grip on the tub secure but loosening so the indentations of her fingers might disappear as she recovered from the claw-like configuration of her hands. John put one of his hands over hers, massaging to help loosening the muscles there while he kissed over her back and shoulders. They almost sank together until John steered them into the tub so as to fulfill on Anna's earlier suggestion.

Laying back on his chest, Anna sighed into the slight steam of the water threatening to turn tepid on them. John's arms wrapped around her, holding her close but loosely. They slipped in the water, the beckoning warmth easing over stretched muscles until Anna flexed her fingers with ease under the water. She lifted her hand and gazed at the two rings there. One ring, once a lie, from Mrs. Hughes and the other ring from John. The truest of true things.

John's hand covered hers, bringing it over her shoulder to kiss, and then eased her arm along the line of the tub. "Are you happy?"

"Do you need to ask me that question?"

"A good husband should always check that his wife is happy. So I ask again," He kissed at the juncture between her neck and collar. "Are you happy?"

"I'm with you," Anna's fingers turned in place, twisting to capture John's and intertwine their digits. "How could I be anything else?"

"There are any number of ways." He tried to warn but Anna only laughed at him. "Do you doubt me?"

"Never." Anna squeezed his fingers between hers. "I just doubt that you'll do anything, ever, that could possibility make me unhappy."

"I already did."

"We weren't married then." Anna brought John's hand into the water with hers, holding over her abdomen. "But we are now. And this is proof that you've already made me happier than I could ever imagine."

"Why's that?"

Anna paused, "I've told you about Guernsey before, yes?"

"You've mentioned it was a rather… terrible experience."

"While there I was…" Anna shook her head, "This was no easier when I told Mrs. Hughes about it. And I didn't even tell her anything."

"Mrs. Hughes knows?"

Anna nodded against John's chest, shifting in the water to send it lapping at the sides of the tub to look at him. "I had to explain why I thought it ridiculous that I could possibly have children."

"But you're pregnant."

"And it's a miracle because…" Anna closed her eyes, "While I was there a German soldier decided he could… He…"

"You don't have to say it." John opened his legs to pull Anna closer so he could hold her tighter. "I think I know."

"The doctor I saw, after it happened, warned me that the damage was significant. Most of it healed but there was a chance that my body wouldn't bear the strain of a child so…" Anna shrugged, "I didn't think I'd ever have children. I also never expected to meet anyone I'd want to have children with after… After something like that you tend to think of men differently."

"I don't doubt it." John's tone turned Anna to see the profile of his face but his eyes were not on her. They stared at something else. Something far more distant. "When we were finally freed, from the camps, I saw the faces of the Japanese women who'd suffered at the hands of the 'liberating' forces."

"War makes monsters of men."

"Who said that?"

"I think I did, just now, but it's not a new thought."

"No," John's head shook against hers. "It's a thought as old as time. Just like the suffering of one person against another is as old as time."

"Cain only needed a rock to kill his brother." Anna sighed, leaning her forehead into John's neck. "But then I found you and my whole life changed. It wasn't so dark anymore."

"Is that why you came here? To get away from all of that?"

Anna nodded, "Whatever demons haunted me, they didn't follow me."

"No, they just stepped aside for new ones."

"I guess they did." Anna shifted against John, a small smile breaking through the tense moment when he tried to bite back a groan. "My, my, Mr. Bates I will say that if there was a problem with pregnancy it wouldn't have been on your end."

John laughed, kissing her cheek. "A man can't help it when he's got the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife."

"You are only slightly delusional, Mr. Bates, so I'll not take your temperature." Anna nudged him but held his arms wrapped about her. "I was… curious about…"

"About how?" Anna nodded, unable to meet his face as the heat of shame blushed over her cheeks. "Darling, it's nothing to be nervous about asking."

He kissed her cheek again but Anna tried to dissuade him. "You didn't have my teachers in Sunday School and regular school talking about the basics of femininity with the most euphemistic of phrases."

"I'm sure the Catholic Boys' School I attended might know a thing or two about euphemisms." John settled, "But it's… I dunno. When I was younger, when I first started experiencing the changes of puberty, it was worse. Anything could lead to my mind distracting itself and suddenly I'd be trying to hide under a table or behind people."

"And now?"

"Now?" He moved against her and Anna's breath hitched. "Now it's just because my lovely wife is naked against me."

"That's all?"

"That's all it takes." He kissed along her neck. "One look at you and I just want to hold you so tightly no one can take you from me."

"I'd like that." Anna twisted her hips and bit her lip at the groan John allowed out. "But I'd like something else much better."

"What?"

"You." Anna shifted, the threat of slipping in the tub and ending her plan for innocent seduction calling from the rational part of her mind, but managed to position herself to take John again. They sighed together as she sank back in place, maneuvering around John as he tried to manipulate their positions for the most comfortable position. One that, by necessity, seated him as deeply as he had ever been inside her.

They shifted slowly, their lips setting the pace as much as their exhausted but eager bodies. The lack of hurry urged Anna to discover, to experiment, and to lounge in the presence of surrounding safety of John. His hands and lips never stopped adoring her, displaying the depths of his affection with every touch. Lapping water was nothing to them as they moved and came together in a burning moment that held all of the passion but none of the ferocity of their earlier exhibitions.

As the water settled, tepid now as it fulfilled on its threat, Anna kissed her husband. "You, Mr. Bates, are the happiest thing in my life."

"And you, Mrs. Bates," He kissed her back, his hands linking on her abdomen. "Are mine. You both are."


	17. Ugly Realizations

Anna ducked her head under the cheers of congratulations. John's hand linked with hers until Miss Marigold and Miss Sybbie tugged it away to examine the rings. One of which John took a few fervent minutes to whisper his inexpressible gratitude for to Mrs. Hughes. But the little girls 'ooohed' and 'ahhed' at what they saw until Lady Mary shooed them to their dinner.

"I'll offer my official congratulations now." She extended her hand to Anna and then to John. "It couldn't come to finer people than the two of you."

"Thank you milady." Anna could not hold back her grin, "I'm very lucky."

"As are we all that you two found one another." Lady Mary sighed, "We need a stabilizing force of sorts in this house. Especially since Mr. Branson's sent word that he'll not be back by the end of the month like he planned."

"No?"

Lady Mary shook her head, "Apparently they like cars in Atlanta. Who could've guessed he'd finally find the runaway success he wanted?"

Anna chewed the inside of her cheek, "How's Miss Sybbie taking the news?"

"At this point the more distressing idea would be if I said that she's gotten used to her father not being here." Lady Mary shrugged, "It's odd but people speak to the resilience of children without realizing that they are the ones who become the adults to run business and industry. What kind of child, used to being abandoned, becomes a leader who trusts anyone?"

"Has he come back to visit?"

"He claims he's busy." Lady Mary waved her hand, as if dismissing the idea. "He promised to come back when the house is officially finished, which the builders say will only be another day or so."

"An opportunity to test his word?"

"More a chance to see if this house can actually be fixed." Lady Mary paused, "The builders were fixing a whole in the attic and they were kind enough to bring all the various left overs to the library."

"Yes?"

"They found an oddly black case. An old trunk blackened, by their estimation, from a severe fire."

Anna frowned, "I'm not sure I understand if there's a question."

"Do you know anything about the case?"

"I…" Anna's chest deflated slightly, "That's a very difficult question to answer, milady. Not because I don't want to but because there's a bit more to the story than just what I may or may not know about that trunk."

Lady Mary's eyebrows rose. "You've an explanation for a trunk that's at least a hundred years old?"

"If you've time this evening I'll tell you everything I know."

"I almost feel like you're inviting me to trust that you invented a pair of self-rotating wings and we're standing at the edge of a cliff." Lady Mary took a deep breath, "I think I need to hear what you know, Ms. Smith."

Anna smiled, "I think Mr. Bates would be a little put out if you keep using my maiden name, milady."

"Another thing to get used to." Lady Mary smiled at her, "The Not-So-Secret Mrs. Bates. Sounds very grand."

"It suits me, milady."

"I'll say your husband agrees." Anna followed the direction of Lady Mary's nod. "He's not taken his eyes from you the entire time we've been speaking."

Anna peeked at John, the flush to her cheeks heating her face at the unabashed way he watched her. "I think he might be a little taken with me."

"I should hope so since he's gone and married you now." Lady Mary clapped her hands together. "But I'm missing dinner and the children should take the unfortunate news that they'll be returning to their studies tomorrow from me."

"I could tell them."

"No, they like you too much and, with your private wedding, they think you're an angel." Lady Mary shook her head, "I won't destroy that illusion. For the moment they love their studies with you so I refuse to jeopardize that. As long as they like you, they learn. I want them bright and ready."

"Ready for what, exactly?"

Lady Mary's jaw flexed, as if she chewed on her words. "I've been contacted by the headmaster of a private institution in the area. I've done some preliminary investigation into the organization and while their students are those of a certain… heritage, it will take George and Marigold, despite the need for special consideration for their conditions."

"They're just as bright as anyone else."

"That wasn't the concern. George's crutches aren't much by the way of space but he will move slower than his classmates. Marigold, on the other hand, will need more help with her chair. The dimensions aren't ideal for a public environment but the school's willing to work around it."

Anna opened her mouth, her voice lower than she expected. "So you won't need a tutor and governess for them?"

"Perhaps not once classes begin." Lady Mary put a hand on Anna's shoulder. "We'll not be rid of you just yet, Mrs. Bates. Despite what this may seem to you, I believe that Mr. Pelham's institution is looking to hire qualified and able instructors."

"Then it must be new."

"It was one of my stipulations upon the chance that my children would attend." Lady Mary held her chin a bit higher, as if ignoring Anna's shock. "I couldn't very well leave you hanging out to dry."

"Milady I don't-"

"Mrs. Bates." Lady Mary held up a hand, stopping Anna's potential argument. "I'm sure you appreciate that anyone who would defend my children and instruct them without bias is someone for whom I would lie at the bar of God, yes?"

"I could guess as much."

"Then it shouldn't surprise you that I'm intensely interested in your continued progress in the world around us."

"I've no words, milady."

"Then we'll leave it at that." She nodded to Anna and John. "When you've finished dinner, I'm still in interested in the tale you'd like to spin me about that black trunk and why you know anything about it."

"I'll be in the library." Anna waited until Lady Mary disappeared into the dining room before joining John and Mrs. Hughes.

"Anything interesting?"

"More than I thought possible." Anna took John's hand. "But I'm famished and I think we could do with some of Mrs. Patmore's cooking."

"Was the hotel's fare not what you expected?"

"It wasn't as good as Mrs. Patmore's cooking, that's for sure." Anna took a seat, John next to her, and endured the few comments from the small staff all sharing the table. When the excitement died down a bit and everyone took their preoccupation with eating a bit more seriously, Anna leaned over to John. "Lady Mary's given my name for consideration as an instructor at a local school."

"Why?"

"She wants to send the children there."

"I thought the frustration was that Miss Marigold and Master George's conditions prevented them from joining with other children."

"Traditionally, yes, but the headmaster there seems convinced that he can adapt the traditions to allow the children an opportunity to experience an actual school. Imagine them making friend their own age from the area."

"You're as excited about their attending school as you would be about your own children." John put his hand over hers, interlacing their fingers for a second. "It's rather endearing."

"I was just basking in the thought that, one day," Anna dragged their joined hands to her abdomen. "We'll be saying the same things about our children."

John only smiled and mimed kissing her before taking back his hand to return to his food. "Tell me, what else was she asking about."

"What makes you think there was more to the conversation?"

"Your face." John nodded at her, maneuvering more potatoes onto his spoon. "At one point, near the beginning of the conversation, you had this expression like you didn't know if you should tell her the truth."

"Should I be worried, Mr. Bates, that you can read me like a book?"

"That's up to you dear." He winked, "But, if you want, what was she asking about that had you considering how to answer her?"

"The builders are almost finished with the house and, by default, moved to the attic." Anna nodded at John's widened eyes. "They found the blackened trunk, Mr. Higgins's trunk, and Lady Mary was curious about it."

"And you're going to tell her about it?"

"It's her house and she deserves to know that there is an element of the haunt about it." Anna kept her voice low, "What if Mr. Green's ghost decides to attack her or the children?"

"You think he will?"

"I don't know. I didn't think he'd take possession of Mrs. Hughes's body and yet he did." Anna took a breath, the rings on her finger clinking against John's when she reached for his hand. "I don't think this development says much for his eternal schemes, do you?"

"But what would make you think he'd take it out on the family now?"

"Because if we're the bridges to Mr. Higgins and Ms. Cotton's happy ending…"

John nodded, "Then there have to be other means of burning said bridge so Mr. Green continues his vindictiveness into eternity."

"Exactly my thought." Anna shrugged, "Lady Mary deserves to know the truth. She needs to know what could bring this house down around her."

"Then why did we wait so long to tell her?" John half-teased and Anna squeezed his hand.

"Because we weren't in the final stages of the game then. I think we are now."

They finished dinner and John kissed Anna's cheek before going out to his cabin. Or, as Anna waved him off, _their_ cabin. The house quieted a bit and Anna moved into the library to see Lady Mary walking around the trunk, collected with the other detritus from the attic. The washed up relics of all those who tried to live in the house and left the bits and bobs of life there to gather dust and sink into the woodwork itself.

"This house was my mother's." Lady Mary's voice broke Anna from her reverie. "I didn't even know it was in the family until my mother moved to New Jersey. She wanted to be close to my grandmother in her last years and, in one of my grandmother's more lucid moments, discovered that this house was a part of my mother's inheritance."

"She didn't know about it before?"

"My mother married my father shortly before the Great War. One of the last of American heiresses married for English title." Lady Mary sighed, "It's part of why the family was so upset I wanted to call this Downton Place. They thought I was bringing too much English with me. But they didn't complain about the English money that paid for the new roof and all the other fixings that've gone in to making it as grand as it was."

"It's a beautiful home." Anna bit at her lip, "Do you know how far back your family's owned the house and land?"

Lady Mary huffed and sputtered a moment. "Over a hundred years. For all the disdain at being 'too English' the first of the Granthams were a wealthy mercantile family who wanted to invest in the plantation for the cotton trade." She shivered, "They weren't, as stories go, abolitionists to start but one of them was a great believer in William Wilberforce and helped convert the family. Cost them a considerable part of their fortune but they freed their slaves and then only hired help from then on out."

"Did you know they were a part of the Underground Railroad?"

Lady Mary's eyebrows rose, "I'm rather surprised you know anything about that. It wasn't taught at my school in England and isn't exactly the most popular topic in this particular neighborhood."

"I only learned about it after coming here." Anna skirted the pile of leavings from the attic and opened the catch on the fireplace to watch Lady Mary's face drop in shock at the sight of the underground tunnel. "They were very active in it."

"I knew about the secret panel. The one in the dining room where all the rugs and blankets with the special signals were hidden but this…" Lady Mary walked to the edge but stopped, "I'm not one for tight spaces."

"Well," Anna closed the latch, "Then it's a good thing none of the children know this exists or they'd be crawling through it themselves."

"Yes, a secret best kept to ourselves." Lady Mary frowned, "But what does any of this have to do with a blackened trunk?"

"That trunk once held these," Anna retrieved the letters from her desk. "Before General Sherman's war of attrition on Georgia and his burning of Savannah, Sun Meadow boasted a foreman from Ireland and a nursemaid for the children who was critical to the success of the Underground Railroad through this house."

Lady Mary opened her mouth as if to speak before taking one of the children's seats. "What's the significance of these two individuals?"

"They were in love and they fell pregnant. The foreman, however, was still married to his wife in Ireland and the nursemaid was a colored woman."

Lady Mary's eyebrows rose, "Daring, on both sides."

Anna could only nod. "Their child was born in New Jersey and raised by your mother's family until a falling out. Something about a Scottish cousin and an affair but Jack Ross could tell you more about that."

"The author, the one who visited?" Lady Mary's brow furrowed, "What would he know about my family?"

"He's the descendant of that family. He's the descendant of the foreman and the nursemaid from this house."

"Is he really?" Lady Mary gave a little laugh, "There are no coincidences in this house, are there?"

"Not many because…" Anna pulled on her fingers. "The house is haunted, milady. I should've told you sooner but-"

Lady Mary held up a hand to stop Anna. "I'm going to ask this once, and please try not to take the offense this will undoubtedly generate, but have you been drinking Mrs. Bates?"

"No milady."

"And you fervently believe that this house is haunted?"

"Not in the way that there are ghosts slamming doors and luring children to rivers." Anna shuddered, "This isn't _Turning of the Screw_."

"I was worried for a moment." Lady Mary folded her arms over her chest. "Then what do the spirits haunting this house want?"

"To be reunited." Anna winced, "It's difficult to explain but the strongest of them… chose Mr. Bates and I as the surrogates to represent their lost opportunities and, in a way, help them reclaim their stolen future."

"You and Mr. Bates?" Lady Mary pursed her lips a moment, "He is Irish and was married but-"

"It's more than that." Anna let out a breath, "Mr. Bates is the descendant of Mr. Higgins and his wife in Ireland. The wife he went back to when he lost Ms. Cotton."

"Who?"

"The foreman, his name was Higgins and the nursemaid was Ms. Cotton."

"And they're the ones who had the secret child who's the ancestor of the author, Jack Ross?"

"Yes."

"So Mr. Ross and Mr. Bates are… cousins?"

"With a few removeds but yes, they share a common ancestor." Anna shrugged, "They worked out how far distant they were but I forgot."

"And these two spirits, this Mr. Higgins and Ms. Cotton, they mean you and Mr. Bates harm?"

"No," Anna shook her head. "They need us as conduits. We're their proxies, in a way, and they want our current happiness to build a bridge they can use to reconnect on the spirit plane so they can reunite and move on to the next life."

"If the house is haunted by two randy, long-lost lovers then I'll take that over the kind who drags nails down a door or acts the role of the _Woman in Black_."

"They're not the only ghosts here." Anna interlaced her fingers before separating them to drop by her sides. "Their happiness, in their lives, was stopped by a Mr. Green. He was the son of the plantation owner of a place called Greenland."

"I've heard of that place. The family died in the Civil War and it fell to ruin." Lady Mary snorted, "Not as unusual as you'd think in this area."

"He was obsessed with Ms. Cotton. Wanted to… possess her."

"And he separated them?"

"He led the Union Army to Sun Meadow so they could burn it down." Anna licked her lips, her skin going hot as her memory sparked to the first memories Ms. Cotton showed her. "Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins helped the family escape the house but before they could get away, Ms. Cotton took a bullet to the back. She died in his arms and-"

"He went back to his wife in Ireland." Lady Mary pushed off her thighs to stand. "So, if I understand the trails of this tale, you're trying to help unite two separated souls while fighting the soul of a very angry, plantation owner hoping to continue his petty vengeance in the space between this life and the next?"

"That sums it perfectly, milady."

"It makes for a good story, I'll say." Lady Mary's tongue ran across the inside of her cheek. "But it doesn't explain the little issues the builders have had. If the house isn't haunted by malignant spirits then who's been causing trouble there?"

"My guess is Mr. Green. If there's no one in the house then-"

"Then there's no one to help Mr. Higgins and Ms. Cotton find their eternal happiness." Lady Mary closed her eyes, shaking her head. "The things people do for love. It'd be almost laughable if I didn't understand it."

"One has to be in love to understand it."

Lady Mary nodded her agreement, "If I were separated from Matthew in the space between, I'd take over whatever body I could find to try and get back to him."

"It's a bit different when they treat you like their personal caravan."

"I'm sure it would." Lady Mary opened her mouth as if to say something else but stopped, her nose scrunching. "Do you smell that?"

Anna sniffed and, for a second, she thought Ms. Cotton took her back to the first vision. The smell ran through her nose, singeing the hairs there as the sweat immediately beaded over her forehead. Without waiting to answer Lady Mary, Anna tore from the room and dashed up the stairs.

The roof, newly set and repaired, groaned and cracked as flamed licked down from the attic. Anna moved along the second level of the house, noting the speed of the fire as it tore ravenously into the paint and wallpaper, sending both curling to blacken as Anna opened the door to Miss Sybbie's room. The girl immediately clung to Anna's legs, dragging along after her as Anna went to Miss Marigold's room.

Lady Edith's voice called from the other side of the balcony as Anna opened the door to see Miss Marigold struggling to get into her chair from her bed. But the motion, performed flawlessly a thousand times, proved too much for the girl now sobbing with fear and sweating from the heat. Anna urged Miss Sybbie to help her as they both reached Miss Marigold. They managed her into her chair as Lady Edith reached them and shouted over the roar of the fire.

"The lift won't work."

"We'll take her backwards down the stairs." Miss Sybbie mimed it, ignoring the shock on Lad Edith's face. "We've done it off the back steps before. We'll just be careful since these stairs are longer."

"Take her now. I'll get George." Anna separated from them in the corridor, noting how Miss Sybbie guided Lady Edith behind Miss Marigold's chair and the two of them gently tipped it back to bounce down the stairs to the main floor.

With flames coming toward the stairs, Anna immediately thought to the back stairs as she opened Master George's door. Lady Mary, below in the hall, called up to Anna but her words were as lost in the sound as her form was in the billowing smoke. Opening the door to George's room, Anna grabbed his crutches and lifted the boy from the floor where fear and adrenaline landed him when he lost his footing.

"Come on Master George, your mother's waiting."

They edged sideways, facing the fire as it took to the large stairs, and Anna found the second-floor entrance to the backstairs. She opened the door with her shoulder and went ahead of Master George on the steep descent to better keep him from a fall. It did not stop their stumble in the kitchen but they managed to get out the back screen door and onto the grass outside. Just in time, as it happened, for Lady Mary to engulf Master George in a bone-crushing hug.

A hug similar to the one John wrapped Anna in when he found her. Anna clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder for a moment. When she did manage to look up, viewing the darkness now tinged orange by the flames ascending to completely engulf the house as the firetrucks blared and raced to the scene with their hoses, she noticed a shape in the shadows. John turned with her and his stiffness told Anna everything she needed to know.

They both saw the spectral form of a man dangling from a tree, his neck sideways as his feet pointed to the ground. Walking away from the chattering group now watching the firefighters struggle with the hoses and sand to try and tame the flames, John and Anna stopped at the base of the tree where the body hung. The body that spoke to them when they were close enough.

"Still think you can help your Mr. Higgins and Ms. Cotton?" The turning body, rotating with the rope as if seeking harmless equilibrim, paused and Anna put a hand over her mouth. "I see you recognize me. Even without that old woman's form you know who I am."

"I've seen you before, in Mr. Higgins's memories."

"Ah yes, the Irish fire crotch." Green's body laughed, straining the sight of his purpled face with the motion. "He would remember me."

"What do you want?" John finally spoke, his hand wrapping over Anna's. "We've no argument with you."

"But you're on the side of Mr. Higgins."

"I've never met him."

"I know his blood's in you. It's why he linked to you. But the ghosts around you… All slanty eyed and squinting. Some kind of primitive Orientals I'm guessing."

"Something like that." John grit his teeth. "I'll repeat, what do you want?"

"To destroy this place and all trace of Ms. Cotton and her inferior Mr. Higgins." Green's hand reached up to the rope, stopping the sickening twist and sway. "Surely you both can appreciate the lengths I'd go to."

"Hanging yourself?"

"This?" Green pointed at the rope, "This was a gift from the locals. Their revenge for me 'helping' the Union Army."

"I can't imagine they were pleased that you led them to burn down the neighborhood." Anna wrapped her arms around herself. "Why the tree?"

"The cost of asking for this favor again." Green pointed his free hand toward the house. "To get it to burn to the ground twice, I must now hang from this tree until I've paid the price."

"With no one to see you?"

"You see me."

Anna shook her head, "You're nothing to us. Just a bump on our road."

"But I was more than that to them." Green's grip on the rope slackened and his body went back to turning in a macabre circle. "And when it all comes to a head, "I'll be more to you."

"No, I don't think so." John guided Anna away, "There's nothing to see here."

"I agree." Anna walked with John, back toward the now smoldering remains of the house as Lady Mary and Lady Edith tried to calm the children. "What do we do now? They've lost everything."

"We help them rebuild." John shrugged, "We're not busy."

Anna put her hand in John's. "No, not really."

They rejoined the group and Anna almost lost her breath again as Lady Mary threw her arms around her, crying uncharacteristically into her shoulder. "You saved him. You saved him for me."

"Of course I did." Anna rubbed her hand hesitantly over Lady Mary's back until the other woman unlatched herself and wiped smears of black of her face as a combination of the soot and smoke and whatever makeup now smudged and smeared over her face.

"I do hope you'll accept the apology for not believing you about the haunting aspect of this house." Lady Mary whispered, taking the handkerchief that John offered to try and dab at her face.

"This was just an accident, I'm sure."

"Like the last maid who fell through a hole in the attic and the myriad of tiny little problems the builders have been complaining about since the beginning?" Lady Mary shook her head. "Even if the investigators now working their way through my burnt and sodden house find it was a smoldering fag, I'll not believe anything by the way of coincidence."

Anna managed a small smile, "Because those don't exist at this house."

"Exactly." Lady Mary turned back to the house, "I guess it's time to start over. Or, better yet, start over all over again."

"It's not so bad." Anna shrugged, "I've done it three times now and it gets easier as you go along."

"Stiff upper lip and take it on the chin." Lady Mary held her head high, "I don't intend to take this lying down."

"How'd you mean?"

"Insurance'll pay for the remodel and fixing the house. The heirlooms and photographs… Personal items will be the greatest losses but that's not what worries me." Lady Mary lowered her voice and addressed Anna. "I'm worried about your ghosts. If they don't get their shit together and they put my children in danger again, I don't care what plane they're on, I'll find each and every one of them and send them to Hell. Is that understood?"

Anna noted a slight mist of shadow surrounding them, Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins more prominent among them. "I think they understand you."

"Good." Lady Mary straightened, "Then they have very little time and they should work on getting their problems solved."

John voice in Anna's ear startled her. "Why didn't we just get her help from the beginning if it was that easy?"

"I think that might be why they asked us instead of her," Anna shivered, "She can be horribly terrifying when she wants to be."


	18. Silent Prayers

Anna flipped through another book before tossing it to John. "You can't read it. The pages are all black."

"There are treatments you could apply to restore the page."

"Then we'll make a pile for those but, for now," Anna pointed at the box. "It goes in there. With all the others."

"Pity." John dropped the book in the box. "I rather like Dickens."

"Don't we all?" Anna checked another book, "I don't think anything will revive this one."

"It's a shame." John caught the book and added it to a box of charred and crumbling books. "She had such a magnificent library. Her father's family cultivated it for generations."

"Then it's a good thing she came here, got a little American in her, and decided to insure everything." Anna and John looked up as Lady Mary entered the room, "I made sure that I could replace at least the cost of the legacy, if not the legacy itself in case of disaster."

"Milady," Anna walked toward her, removing the rubber gloves and wiping her hands on her apron. "I'm so sorry."

"You've nothing to apologize for." Lady Mary shook her head, "It's your ghosts I want to speak to. I'm guessing they're not completely unaware of the consequences of playing with things that aren't their concern."

"I'm not sure it works that way." Anna tugged at her fingers and then jumped when someone spoke next to her.

"We never meant any harm to the Grantham family." Anna gaped at Ms. Cotton, standing next to her. "You asked that I stay away, insisted it, really, before your wedding and I've been away."

"Mrs. Bates…" Anna turned her gaping face to Lady Mary as the woman pointed at the exact spot where Ms. Cotton stood. "Is this your ghost?"

Anna nodded, "She is, technically speaking."

Lady Mary swallowed and extended a hand but retracted it a moment later. "I do hope you took the gesture as enough… Given your incorporeal nature."

"It was kind of you." Ms. Cotton studied Lady Mary a moment. "You look a lot like her. The lady of the house when I was here. The next owner of Sun Meadow."

"Ancestor on my mother's side, as it happens." Lady Mary paced a bit, as if testing the dilution of light to find the angle best suited to see more of the ghostly image of Ms. Cotton. "You're a bit shorter than I imagined. "Mr. Ross isn't a tall one himself but I thought he'd had a run of bad luck in the height department."

"Not everyone can tower over the rest of the room."

"Yes," Lady Mary smiled to herself, "I guess they can't. It'd steal all my thunder and I can't say I'd be too happy about that."

Anna looked at John, "Can you see her too?"

John nodded, using his cane to bring himself to Anna's side. "This is her then?"

"This is me." Ms. Cotton looked John over. "You look just like him."

"He is my great-grandfather, or something."

"You don't sound like him."

"Is he coming?" Anna pressed, forcing Ms. Cotton to look away from John. "Will Mr. Higgins be joining our little, unplanned cabal?"

"I don't know. I still can't see him."

John frowned, "That doesn't make any sense. If Green went to the trouble of making some deal with the Devil to try and burn this house down just to keep you two apart, that would suggest that there was some kind of indication you might be moving toward finding one another."

"I can hear him, sometimes. It's a bit… foggy. Like something calling your name through a wall." Ms. Cotton pointed to the blackened trunk in the middle of the library. "It survived twice."

"Not sure if the letters did." Anna cringed, "There were in the desk and-"

"We've taken a full inventory and, except for the books, most of the library was left unharmed." Lady Mary pointed to the fireplace, "The latch is now stuck but at least I don't have to worry about George or Marigold tumbling down the steps."

"Because you weren't worried about Sybbie?" The three living people in the room turned to the door to see Mr. Branson, hair disheveled and suit coat hanging off his arm so his tie cold dangle from his neck and the wrinkles on his shirt were entirely visible. "When I left her here, you said she'd be safe."

"And she is, Tom. Mrs. Bates here helped get her out and she helped Edith get Marigold out." Lady Mary shook her head, "She didn't even get a cough from smoke. She's perfectly healthy and except for her smaller living space in the outbuildings on the property, her life goes on as normal."

"She was in danger." Mr. Branson dropped his jacket and bag, leaving them to topple over as he wove through the debris to reach Lady Mary. "She was in danger here and you were supposed to keep her safe."

"Is this another lecture about how I keep your child safe while you're gallivanting off with your business partner to who knows where selling cars because you can't look your daughter in the eye and tell her that you're a coward?"

"Stop it Mary."

"Stop what? Finally asking for you to drop a pair of stones so you can actually face your daughter or telling you that it's time you took responsibility for the child who's grown up most of her life as mine and not yours?"

"Tom, I think we need-" The icy stare-down between Lady Mary and Mr. Branson broke as Mr. Talbot walked into the room, managing another three suitcases and appearing just as hastily put-together as Mr. Branson. "I apologize, this conversation appears rather private."

"I'm sure you should share in the blame being spread around like marmalade." Lady Mary shook her head at Mr. Branson. "Your daughter, Tom, is fine. The house is not fine but it's a thing. It can be replaced. The years and moments you're missing with your daughter can't. That's something to think about before you try to come all up in arms at me as if I were the one in the wrong."

Lady Mary stalked out of the room, leaving John and Anna standing awkwardly with the two other men… and Ms. Cotton's ghost. Everyone made a concentrated effort of not looking at one another as Mr. Branson worked back to his bag and took the one under Mr. Talbot's arm. He took a deep breath before speaking. "Mr. Bates, which of the buildings is-"

"The one next to the workshop Mr. Branson. There may be an extra cot for Mr. Talbot if he wanted to-"

"Oh no," Mr. Talbot shook his head, "I'll be staying in town. I've got business there and I'm just here for… Tom's emotional support. I think I've already intruded in all of this enough."

"There's a good hotel, just near the courthouse, if you've not made a reservation." Anna volunteered and Mr. Talbot nodded at her.

"Much obliged Ms. Smith."

"It's Mrs. Bates now, actually." Anna held up her hand.

"Then I'll give you my congratulations and see myself into town." Mr. Talbot nodded toward the Bates couple before lowering his voice to speak to Mr. Branson. "Will you be alright here on your own with your sister-in-law so…"

"I'll be fine, thank you Henry."

The two men left the library and Anna turned to see Ms. Cotton but the woman had vanished. "I guess that's the end of that conversation."

"In other circumstances I'd wish I were a ghost." John went back to the piles, lifting the box of completely unsalvageable books under his arm. "Then I could've disappeared and avoided such an awkward conversation."

"But it does beg the question," Anna moved to the next shelf, sorting the books there. "If Mr. Branson takes Sybbie with him to Atlanta and Lady Edith decides that, perhaps, she'd prefer another locale, then what will Lady Mary do?"

"Sounds more like a question for Lady Mary."

"She won't want to live in this house." Anna pulled on her gloves, noting John's confused expression. "Didn't you ever get the feeling that her restoration of this was more a way to… distract herself from the life she's living."

John set the box down on the table and shifted to the window to lean so he could take weight off his leg. "You think she's not inclined to stay?"

"I think this was a project. The project now is to restore it again, with the insurance money guaranteed her by those horrible adjustors yesterday." Anna shuddered, "That woman made my skin crawl."

"I can't say I liked the look of either of them. Guy Fawkes and his assistant those two." John nodded in agreement and Anna snorted a laugh.

"But which one's which?"

"Not sure it matters." John sighed, "Say she finishes the house, and Mr. Branson takes Sybbie back to Atlanta with him, and Lady Edith finds her happiness… somewhere, then what?"

"Then we'll have to decide what we want." Anna shrugged, flipping through the pages of a book in her hand before adding it to a pile. "I don't think I should ignore the offer Mr. Pelham made me for a position at his school."

"Especially if Lady Edith is as infatuated with him as she seemed." John grinned, "She looked ready to board Miss Marigold there permanently just to have an excuse to see the headmaster."

"I wouldn't begrudge either of them. They both seem like matched souls." Anna flipped through another book and frowned before setting it to the side. "People others forget because they don't display all their talents at once."

"Then you want the position?"

Anna straightened, rocking the book in her hand a moment. "I think I should. I've had such a lovely time instructing these three and… It's a stable occupation. There will always be a need for teachers and while I'll have to continue some local qualifications it would give us an income."

"Especially if Lady Mary moves away and they don't need a gardener at Sun Meadow anymore?"

Anna nodded, "But your carving, John. That's a skill that could sell. You'd just have more time to do it."

"Anna," John crossed the room to her, his hands gently stroking her arms. "You needn't worry about me. I'll find work and we'll make a home for the three of us. I don't intend to let you, or our little one, starve."

His hand went to her abdomen and Anna covered it with her own. "I know. I just… I feel like, despite everything, we've both been happy here and I'd hate to lose what we've built. What we've gained here."

"We don't have to." John shrugged, "If you'll be teaching at Mr. Pelham's school then we'll stay in this area. Perhaps even buy this house."

"You can't be serious. The upkeep alone would sink us."

"I was only positing a possible solution." John kissed her forehead. "I'll get the first load moved to the burn pile and, hopefully, see what else Lady Mary needs from us in terms of how to try and rescue this house."

Anna kissed him quickly and sent him off, turning back to the books. She sorted another few shelves before picking up a box of the books that were good for nothing but the burn pile. Just as she managed to get off the back porch with them, heading for the large pile of discarded detritus from the husk of a house, Anna heard someone calling her name.

Turning, the box tucked tightly to her side to make sure it did not slip, she smiled widely at the sight of three people coming toward her. The box settled down near the others and Anna hurried to remove her rubber gloves and shove them into an apron pocket so she could shake the dark hand extended toward her from Jack Ross. "It's a pleasure to see you again. I thought you were back in New York."

"I was, for a whole month, and then I get word through the Grantham family-"

"You're back on speaking terms?"

"Now that I've met the granddaughter, I thought it high time I got back on good terms." Mr. Ross gave his pearl-white smile. "They loved me, in case you were wondering about how it went."

"It's hard not to like you, Mr. Ross." Anna turned to the others with him. "And Mr. Aldridge, it's a pleasure to see you're still keeping an eye on Mr. Ross."

"He needs both of them." Mr. Aldridge's smile matched Ross's before motioning to the blonde woman next to him. "This is my wife, Rose, who insisted on seeing the lovely land of Georgia on this visit."

"It's so hot here. How do you bear it?" Rose's handshake was just as firm as her husband's and her smile matched the set for the trio.

"I don't, really. But it's winter now so I guess it's a little less oppressive. You picked a good time to come and endure it."

"And I thought New York City was horrible in the summer. I can't imagine how everyone down here doesn't just melt."

"With great care." Anna motioned at the house. "In other circumstances I'd offer you some water or lemonade but the staff is now, officially, all looking for new employment and the kitchen is nonexistent."

"Hence why I'm back here." Mr. Ross pointed a finger at the house. "I know Lady Mary's insured this place, but does she have a historical consultant to make sure it'll still be classified as a historical property and kept on the register at the historical society? If not then-"

"Mr. Ross," Anna put up a hand, "That's a conversation I think you need to have with Lady Mary herself. If you'll follow me then I'll take you to her."

They tramped through the grass, dodging the children's game of rounders made far more exciting by the additions of Mr. Branson, Talbot, and Lady Edith as the pitcher. The children all called out to Anna and she waved back before guiding the guests but the stairs to the cabin Lady Mary had claimed as her own. Before Anna could even knock the door opened to reveal Mrs. Hughes.

Blinking at one another, Mrs. Hughes stepped aside to allow Anna and the others inside before tucking herself in with them. The sitting room of the cabin was far inferior to the circumstances of Anna's first interview at Downton Place but Lady Mary filled the space just as grandly, despite the reduction in her circumstances. She looked up from the papers in her hand and frowned as she stood.

"I wasn't aware we were expecting guests." Lady Mary shook Mr. Ross's hand. "Not that I'd say no to another conversation with you, Mr. Ross, given the way my mother says you absolutely charmed her when you met in New York last month."

"Your mother's a charming lady, it wasn't the hardest work I've ever done in that regard." Mr. Ross winked at Lady Mary, "Almost as charming as yourself."

"I can smell snake oil when a salesman prepares it, Mr. Ross, and just because your card reads 'historian' doesn't mean I don't also smell it on you." Lady Mary turned to the other two. "Rose, Atticus, did you send word you were coming?"

"Thought we'd surprise you by being the ones accompanying our friend to the south." Mr. Aldridge gave her a hug and Rose followed suit, with a bit more energy. "I work with him, in New York."

"Then I guess we're all a bit more interconnected than we first believed." Lady Mary offered them seats on the small sofa while Anna and Mrs. Hughes folded into the scenery. "How can I be of service Mr. Ross? I'll assume that Mrs. Bates here already informed about the reduction of our hospitality, current circumstances being what they are."

"She did but…" Mr. Ross reached around the back of the sofa. "You didn't tell me you were married. Congratulations."

"Thank you." Anna smiled and kept her mouth shut as Mr. Ross turned back to face Lady Mary.

"I'm here about Sun Meadow."

"It's listed, currently, as Downton Place."

"And that's part of the problem." Mr. Ross took a breath. "When I heard it'd suffered another fire, I realized I couldn't let the opportunity pass me by this time."

"Opportunity?"

"Surely you're aware that I've made overtures to your family about acquiring the property in the past. Buying it, restoring it, and turning it into a local museum for not only the local Civil War history but also a history of the Underground Railroad." Mr. Ross paused, "I want this place to stand sentinel to a by gone age so no one forgets what it stands for."

"I thought it stood as a home."

"But it could be more." Mr. Ross took a breath, swallowing as if to steady his nerves, "I would like to propose a business plan, of sorts."

"I'm sure I shouldn't be the one to tell you, Mr. Ross, the dangers of a black man owning a house like Downton Place in Savannah, Georgia, do I?"

"Hence the plan," Mr. Ross held up a finger. "It still lists under your name as the owner and operator. You're the face of the whole thing."

"And the part where a house known for helping ferry slaves north will see enough business in a place where the locals wanted my family's heads as much as it wanted to burn the house down isn't a bother to you?"

"Given that we're fresh off a war where the whole world had to put themselves to the hazard," Mr. Ross shrugged. "It might not be too bold to suggest that people want a little more stability in the face of something like that. Reaffirm to them the innate goodness of mankind."

"By giving them a symbol of the past?"

"A symbol that people, despite personal danger, would choose to the do the right thing and accept that the work they did might never've come to light." Mr. Ross opened his hands to Lady Mary. "Don't tell me you can't see the possible benefits of this idea."

"I was rebuilding the house as a place where I could live with the children under my care, Mr. Ross. Not as a showpiece for a community I'm not sure would appreciate it."

"Pardon my French Lady Mary but to Hell with the community. To Hell with anyone who'd stand in the way of you doing what you want in this." Mr. Ross took another breath, "I don't think you want to live in this house. You're too far from your family and you're now on your second go-round with trying to rebuild it. Only this time it's worse than before."

"With whatever respect might be due you at this point, Mr. Ross, it's none of your business what I want to do with the house. It's mine and has been in my family for generations. I'll not part with it."

"And what about the ghosts that won't part with it either?" The room went cold and Anna met the flick of Lady Mary's eyes at Mr. Ross's comment. "What about the forces in that house that set the hairs on my arm on end? The ones that showed Ms. Smith… sorry, Mrs. Bates that passageway or that trunk or those letters? Will you let them be your constant guests and bring another tragedy down on this house while you're trying to tuck yourself safely inside?"

"I'm not sure they'd treat endless streams of guests tramping over the floorboards with much more respect, Mr. Ross, should your assertion be true."

Mr. Ross gave a little chuckle. "You're stubborn, I'll give you that."

"I'm also not interested in selling Downton Place."

"I'm asking you to buy into a business venture with me."

"With my house as collateral."

"It's not much of a house at the moment."

Lady Mary's eyebrows rose, "And that's your argument?"

"I was here when the house was a gutted waste the first time. I saw the time and effort you put in to bring it back to its former glory and it was incredible. I almost cried at the beauty of it. However," Mr. Ross held Lady Mary's gaze, the excitement and energy of his early comments mellowing. "That house doesn't belong to any person anymore. It belongs to the ghosts of those who died here. Its theirs and while I believe in a God who I worship on a Sunday, I'm not so far removed from the religions of my ancestors to recognize when a ground is hallowed by the spirits who walk there."

"Which you believe of Downton Place?"

"Which I know about Downton Place." Mr. Ross flexed his jaw, "I don't know if Mrs. Bates told you but my great-grandmother worked here. She was Ms. Cotton, the last nursemaid to the Grantham children before General Sherman's army burned the place to the ground. This is not an insignificant place for me either. It's, if I dare say it, my family home as well."

Lady Mary studied him a moment before turning to everyone else. "If I could have a few moments alone with Mr. Ross, I think there are some things he and I need to discuss in private."

Anna shuffled out with everyone else, leaving Mr. Aldridge and Rose in Mrs. Hughes's capable hands as she left the tiny porch. Her trek through the grasses back to the house brought her to John, finishing a discussion with the foreman of the repair crew on the front porch. She climbed toward him, smiling him. "What'd you just discover Mr. Bates?"

"That the fire did, in fact, destroy your room." He shrugged, "I guess you'll have to live with me in my cabin forever."

"As if I didn't plan to do that anyway." Anna put her hands in his. "Mr. Ross is speaking with Lady Mary about turning this place into a museum."

"Not a bad choice, considering her options."

"You think so?"

"It's a lovely house, when it's not half-burned, and it'll make a nice monument to a great family that did the right thing." John cocked his head, "I could imagine it."

"That's what we want." Both of them started at the sight of Ms. Cotton. But she was not alone. Mr. Higgins stood beside her, their fingers almost touching, and a host of indistinguishable spectral forms lined up behind them. "For people to remember us. To remember those that history decided it was more convenient to forget. To remember those without photographs or descendants or names written delicately in church Bibles or county registers. A place where we'll no longer be shadows and specters but beings with blood and bone."

Anna held to John's hand, noticing how Ms. Cotton's fingers twitched in the general direction of Mr. Higgins's hand but still did not touch. "What can we do about that? We're not much better than any of you. No better, if we're being honest."

"Lady Mary is agreeing to Mr. Ross's proposal as we speak." Mr. Higgins answered, his fingers a fraction closer to Ms. Cotton's. Once again our families will be aligned. The history of this place will be back in order and all will be right with the world again."

"Then can't you all move forward?" Anna frowned, "Isn't that the point?"

"It's not done yet." Ms. Cotton's voice took on a deeper, more resonant tone. "We're not all found yet. There are still some of us lost."

"What are we supposed to do about it?" Anna pressed but froze when Ms. Cotton's ghostly hands settled chilled on her cheeks. "I don't know how to help you. This isn't my fight."

"It's everyone's fight, Anna May Smith Bates." Ms. Cotton held her gaze and Anna caught John's frozen posture out of her periphery as Mr. Higgins held him in thrall in the same manner. "These names need to be remembered."

"But I don't know their names."

"Then you need to find where I kept them." Ms. Cotton's forehead touched Anna's. "You need to put it all right, once and for all."

In a moment Anna was no longer standing next to John. She could not say exactly where she was but she knew it was not the porch. And, in the moment when someone called her name, she knew she was no longer herself.

"Anna, please don't dawdle. They're getting nervous." She glanced up at the woman who, as Ms. Cotton had said, looked exactly like Lady Mary. "They can't stay down there forever."

"Right," Anna looked at the backs of her hands, the color of the finest milk chocolate she ever saw. "I'll go right now."

"Good. The Greens are coming to dinner, Papa's idea, and I don't want them lurking up here while we're keeping some of their escaped slaves right under their noses. And they don't need to be cooped up another minute." Missus Mary checked the clock in the hall. "Mr. Higgins should be finished now. He'll help you."

"Of course." Anna nodded, "Of course he will."


	19. Final Confrontations

Anna grabbed at her skirts, billowing and snapping around her ankles as she jogged from the house and toward the outbuildings. The workers leaving the fields for the day nodded at her, tipping hats if they had them as she looked past them, searching for the tall Irish foreman. In a second she saw him and their eyes met. They worked toward one another, weaving between the other workers like salmon swimming upstream, and finally managed to make a little pocket for themselves amongst the suffocation of bodies.

"John? John Bates?" her voice was low, so no one around them could hear, and he only nodded his response. When their hands touched she knew for sure, no matter what her eyes said about the man before her. "What-"

He jerked his head away from the workers and they found a tree to keep them mostly hidden but he whispered all the same. "I don't know. His hands had my face and his forehead touched mine and then I was in the field. Someone was yelling something at me and I… I don't know what the hell's going on."

"I think they put us here." Anna shook her head, "Something about setting it all right or making it our fight or just… I don't know. She's done it again."

"I can see why you're not chuffed to help her. What with them commandeering our bodies and all." John paused, "What about the baby? Are you-"

"I don't know." Anna put her hands to her abdomen but the moment she did she realized they were not her hands and nor was it her abdomen. "I don't think we're even ourselves. It's like we're possessing them."

"Nice change of pace."

"I don't think so." Anna put a hand unconsciously to her back. "We need to find out what day it is."

"Why?"

"Miss… Missus Mary asked me to get you to help move the runaways in the underground space. My guess is that we've got to be close to the day Ms. Cotton died. The way she spoke to me, about setting things right…" Anna shrugged, "It would seem far too ridiculous to be at any other time."

"Because this isn't already ridiculous?"

"I've learned to redefine my parameters from the term. If everything were ridiculous then we passed that moment a long time ago."

"Still, I'd like to be sure. Better safe than sorry and all that."

Anna nodded, "Agreed. But we need to get those slaves moved before someone suspects we're not ourselves."

"And if they do? What do we tell them?" John put on an affected voice, "Our deepest apologies but we're actually not supposed to be born for another hundred years and we're just borrowing these bodies against our will for reasons as yet unknown and not exactly forthcoming?"

"I'd rather not test nineteenth century superstition, thank you." Anna put a hand to her head, shaking it. "You'd think they could've warned us."

"Or just left us alone."

"I've been wishing that for a long time."

"I know."

"I just…" Anna sighed, "I'm just tired of it all."

"I know." John placed a careful hand on her shoulder. "We'll get through this Anna. No matter what, I'll not stop until we're in our bodies."

"I know you won't." Anna almost reached for his hand before pulling back, stopping herself as she remembered who and where they were. "I guess there's not much else we can do."

"Other than pretend to be them? Not much, as far as I can tell."

"Then that's what we'll do. We've got to get through it and hope we get to take our lives back at the end of it." Anna paused, "And you'll need to be more Irish."

"More Irish?"

"He's straight from Ireland. He still had his accent in every memory Ms. Cotton had of him and, on the porch, he was a lot more Irish than you."

"Alright." John coughed before taking a look around. "And you'll need to be… Something else."

"Something else?"

"Less British, for one. And speak like someone a bit less… educated."

"By this point they were reading at an adult level. You've seen the letters."

"But your accent is all wrong. You should be from Georgia, born and raised in the South with an affect on your voice as well. One more like Ms. Cotton's."

Anna let out a breath, "This is a nightmare."

"At least we're sharing it."

"I'd rather you were there to pull me from it."

John almost put his hand back on her shoulder but pulled back. "We'll survive this together. Like we've done everything else."

Anna managed a small smile, "Together is a nice word."

"Then perhaps, together, we can figure out exactly what we're supposed to do with the slaves in the cellar and where they're supposed to go. Because, as I recall, they've never given us details on their part of the Underground here."

"They haven't, no, but I've done more than a bit of reading from Mr. Ross's book and I think I know where they're supposed to go."

"It can't be out the exit to the fields. It's broad daylight and-"

"The workers are leaving for the day." Anna motioned to those leaving the fields. It was something about the way Sun Meadow was run. Because the workers here are all freed slaves, paid for labor, they used to hide escapees in their numbers." Anna pointed toward the shed where, in her time, John kept his carving accouterments and finished goods. "That's the meeting spot and, look, someone's already waiting there."

"Then I guess I'm due on the end that comes out around here." John jerked his thumb toward where the tunnel led out. "Better get them out."

They separated, a hint of adrenaline spurring Anna forward and back to the house. She dodged the servants cleaning over the house and preparing the dining room for the inevitable dinner Missus Mary seemed to dread, and found the library as empty as she needed it to jerk the latch under the mantle on the fireplace. Unlike a hundred years in the future, rusted and worn with age and time, this one clicked quickly and Anna had to force herself back to avoid tumbling down the stairs. Once revealed, she hurried into the passage and tried to stop herself gasping at the sight of all the people crammed into the space. Some of them looked up at her with a recognition in their eyes Anna wished she could match but found herself utterly lacking in recalling who any of them were.

Before they could speak, she motioned for them to follow her down the tunnel and toward the far exit. "Mr. Higgins, our foreman, will be waiting for you. He'll lead you to where some of the workers are waiting. They'll be the ones taking you on the next stops on your journey."

A few of those listening frowned or turned to a neighbor as if trying to make sense of her but Anna ignored them. They hustled on all the same, despite whatever reservations about her odd accent or mannerisms sprung up, and Anna waited until they were all out before shutting the door on her end and making her way back toward the library. But, as she passed the opening to the room where she first saw the visions of Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins, Anna paused.

Her fingers dragged along the sideposts of the door and found the carved initials of John Higgins and Anna Cotton. When her fingers touched there, it was as if something shocked up her arm and Anna's instinct was to press harder into the wood, as if reacting to the electric pulse that contracted all her muscles. The motion allowed another click and a section of brick popped from the wall. Anna let out squeal in shock, her hand clamping over her mouth in a second to stop the sound continuing. But it only echoed in the empty room and returned to her weaker and far more hollow than before.

Removing her hand slowly from her mouth, Anna stepped to the brick and tugged it gently until it plopped in her hand. She hefted its weight a moment, frowning as it took no energy at all to lift. Her grip firmed and, for a moment, Anna almost dropped the object as it crumbled in her hand. The bits and pieces broke to scatter on the dirt floor under her as Anna wiped her hand on her dress to remove the fake brick dust mixed with more mortar and dirt than actual baked clay.

But as she looked back to where the fake brick had popped from the wall, Anna noted a tiny hidey hole stacked with letters. Letters, she realized as she drew the stack closest to her forward, that she knew well. Her fingers stroked along the paper, fresh and lively instead of crinkled with age and neglect, as she hefted the stack in one hand.

"It was me." Anna breathed, pivoting to see the trunk in the corner. "I put them all together in the trunk and… They'll…"

Shoving the letters unceremoniously back into the hole, Anna hurried over to the trunk and lifted the lid. Without its hallmark blackened exterior, she did not recognize it until she noted the interior where the intricately carved initials of J.H. embossed themselves to declare the owner. An owner who, as she pulled the stacks of blankets and shawls from the interior, had donated it to a worthy cause. A cause Anna intended to usurp as she left the fluffy former inhabitants of the trunk on the cot and began sorting the letters into the bottom of the trunk.

Soon it replicated the image she had from that day in the attic, all those months ago, and Anna closed the lid and clicked it shut. Her fingers ran over the wood, warped from humidity and damp but still holding a life so different from the one she knew. With the flat of her hand on the lid, Anna pushed herself to stand and went to leave the room.

But again, something stopped her. For a moment Anna wondered if perhaps she and Ms. Cotton possessed the body together and they could drive it like a motorbike with a side-along car. A moment later the notion passed as no voices in her head spoke with the distinctive southern drawl of Ms. Cotton. So she pressed forward to leave but a tingling at the back of her neck stopped her again.

The hole, now gaping with its inevitable blackness, beckoned to Anna. She cringed, her hand holding to her chest instead of risking what else might lurk in the convenient but unknown hideaway used for stashing erotic and romantic missives between two unlikely and unlawful lovers. Despite her misgivings, Anna snuck her hand into the hole and felt over a bit of cardboard.

She frowned, her fingers flexing to try and find the end to pull the object forward. Her arm bent and her fingers executed a particular set of gymnastics to escape this human-sized monkey-trap but she managed to get the edge and dragged the object forth. When she did, Anna gaped at the beginning scrawl she recognized from so many of the early letters.

 _Anna Mary Cotton's Book of Help._

With careful fingers, delicate even when the construction of the object did not seem to warrant any similar care in its formation, to see the first page. Carefully and painstakingly written names ran in a column down one side with phonetically spelled destinations and locations across from them. Names were marked as individuals or families with pictographs for the first few pages but as the handwriting improved, so did the record keeping. Page after page of written names acting as a record of the passengers ferried by the intrepid Ms. Cotton. All written in a book Anna could not take with her.

"You'll need to find it."

She almost screeched in surprise, fumbling the book in her hands to try and locate the source of the voice. But Anna could see no one. Pausing, swallowing with nary a sound, Anna whispered into the empty room. "Who's there?"

"It's always me here." Anna turned slowly to see the spectral apparition of Ms. Cotton. "I'm the only one you can see."

"But I'm in your body."

"Not in the way you're imagining."

Anna held up the hand not holding tightly to the record of the escaped slaves. "These aren't my hands and this isn't my body. How could it be different than what I'm imagining?"

"Because this," Ms. Cotton gestured around them, "Isn't happening to you. It's already happened, to me."

"I wasn't under the mistaken impression we were changing the past." Anna tucked the book back to rest on the makeshift shelf of the hideyhole to free up her hands. "Time only runs in one direction."

"Hence why you're not in my body in the way you think you are." Ms. Cotton pointed a finger at her chest and walked toward Anna. "Could I be here, before you, if you were in my body?"

"I did wonder if I was sharing space in your brain but I guess it's a bit more complicated than my consciousness traveling over the river of Time to temporary take residence and relive a critical moment in your history."

"Yes and no." Ms. Cotton cringed, "My memories of this day, my last on earth, are fuzzy. So, in a way, I think you are actually taking over my consciousness."

"Then why would you do this to me?"

"Because I can't change my past any more than you could try to change it." Ms. Cotton shrugged. "You took control of my body for a time and I don't remember what happened in that time."

"It only happened because you made it happen."

"Hence the circle of time and its infinite complexities." Ms. Cotton almost smiled but Anna shook her head.

"No, you can't just play with my life and pretend it's all a game. This isn't funny and there's not an ounce of whatever other rhetorical device you might employ to rationalize that you stole my soul from my body and planted it here."

"It's not here so much as-"

"I don't bloody care about the semantics." Anna uselessly raised and lowered her hands, as if she wished for something breakable to throw across the room or crash to the ground to properly express her level of rage. "You stole me from my body to put me here. I don't care if it happened before. You made a choice to do this to me and that's on you."

Ms. Cotton paused, nodding. "I can't imagine how little you must think of me."

"After all your interference in my life I can promise it's not very highly." Anna took a breath, trying to calm herself. "Why this day? Why send me to the end of your life when it was the first memory you showed me?"

"Because this is the day where Green holds sway."

Anna frowned, "I don't understand. He's hanging from a tree in the garden of the house. I saw his ghost there, turning on the ever winding rope."

"But here, in this… limbo between the world beyond, your world, the world of my past, and where I'm trapped, he still exercises his presence." Ms. Cotton pointed to Anna. "In your time, where your body is, he might be hanging from that tree in recompense for burning the house again. But here, he's still a powerful being about to exercise his influence."

"And burn the house the first time." Anna sighed, "Everyone at heart is a pyromaniac I guess. I just never thought I'd meet someone so insistent that it was the be-all, end-all of solutions."

"He's a proud man with an inclination toward Biblical imagery."

"Does he also insist on sermons out of doors so he can watch the un-Christlike attitude of his foremen beating his fellowman in the fields while listening to Christ tell us to love one another?" Ms. Cotton did not answer so Anna shook her head. "I guess it hardly matters."

"What matters is that you defeat him here."

"I can't change the past." Anna pointed to Ms. Cotton and then herself. "If defeating him is changing your fate or the fate of this house or anything else then we've already changed everything."

"It's not quite as tangible as you think." Ms. Cotton walked to the hideyhole and pushed the book back into its spot before kneeling down to the floor and picking up another fake brick to fit perfectly into the hole. "John insisted we keep spares, in case our excitement got the better of us."

"Smart." Anna's brow furrowed, "How'd you lift that if I'm in your body?"

Ms. Cotton smiled, "I told you, it's not as tangible as you think."

"So we're living in both your memory and a… shadow plane at the same time? We're in two places at once?"

"More that we're in a place where the lines of time intersect and intertwine." Ms. Cotton gave a snigger, "Someone once said, or will say, something about time not being a linear course of events but something more… complicated."

"I've already got a headache." Anna sat on the cot. "If I'm living both the memories you don't remember and on an intangible plane, what did you need John and I for anyway? What are we supposed to do differently?"

"You've already married him, which is different enough."

"But it didn't… I don't know, break your spell."

"No, but it did make the two of you strong enough to cross from the corporeal world to this plane. It allowed you to help us."

"Something you could've asked us to do instead of cornering us with an army of ghosts and then sending us here."

"You might've said no."

"And that would've been our choice." Anna bit back, trying to tramp down on the urge to seethe. "This isn't anything I wanted."

"Do you think I wanted it?"

"It's none of my business what you wanted. This," Anna gestured around them, "Is the result of your choices, not mine."

"Because I, the child of slaves, had so many choices."

"You chose to act on your feelings for a married white man and have his son. You chose to help with the Underground Railroad, and you chose to mix me up in all of this. Those were your choices." Anna calmed, staring down the other woman. "Don't try and tell me you're innocent in all this and a victim."

"You didn't have to help."

"If I didn't want to, would you let John and I leave right now? Go back to our lives and leave us be?"

Ms. Cotton narrowed her eyes, "Would you rest if you knew that you could've done something to stop all this?"

"I'd have liked it better if my opinion about any of it had been asked at all before you decided to show the moment you and Mr. Higgins had sex on this cot." Anna sat up in a hurry, as if just realizing the location and what she said in context with one another. "Had you asked nicely, I might be in a better mood about it all."

"But would you have helped?"

"I guess we'll never know because you didn't want to risk my choice." Anna took a few breaths before finally speaking again. "If events must play out, then how, exactly, are we supposed to help you?"

"You need to change the ending."

"I don't think you heard the part where-"

"I told you that this is both the past and the present. We're living through these memories but, when they reach the end, they'll try to start again. You need to stop the cycle and let us free."

"How?"

"You can't die."

"Is there a risk that I die and not just your body?"

Ms. Cotton teethed her lip, "I honestly don't know."

"You didn't try and find out if I'd die while in possession of your body before you brought me here to fight your fight?"

"There's not a book I can reference in this."

"But you…" Anna only growled, clawing at her hair for a second before letting out a defeated breath. "How do we change the end?"

"You have to stop me dying. Somehow you have to make sure Green can't kill me when he shoots me in the back."

"I was always a bit surprised that Mr. Higgins didn't rip his throat out for what he did to you."

"It was difficult when the Union soldiers arrested him just before they dragged him off and abandoned Green to the angry townsfolk who lynched him on a tree." Ms. Cotton pulled at her fingers, in a motion Anna found reflected in her own fingers until she dropped her hands to her side. "He was a prisoner until the war was officially over. Then he went back to Ireland."

"And we've all got to play along like that never happened?"

"In a way, yes."

"I'm so glad that you provided all these specifics before you asked us to join you on this fool's errand." Anna put her palm to her forehead. "If I'd known what a horrible mess this would all turn out to be. I never would've looked into any of this. I would've let it lie. Let you lie in that grave in the churchyard and Mr. Higgins in his grave in Ireland and however many other ghosts are springing up from graves, marked or no, because this isn't worth it."

"It is to them."

"But not to me." Anna leaned her head back against the wall, "I'm… I'm tired. I'm tired of trying to understand all of this and being the plaything for powers beyond my comprehension or control."

"We're all that."

"How many mediums do you know?"

"You're not the first I've tried to communicate with."

"Just the only one dumb enough to listen." Anna pushed herself off the wall, "Fine. We'll help you figure your way back to your John so the two of you can move forward with your lives. On the condition that the moment you do, you'll not let any of your ghostly brethren bother us again. We've done our part and it's time for us to be done. Agree?"

She stuck out her hand and watched Ms. Cotton flinch a moment before taking it. "I'm shaking my own hand."

"You're the one who put me here." Anna took her hand back, "So please excuse whatever sympathy I'm loathe to extend to you."

"Think what you will."

Anna only sighed.

The day, as much as was left of it, passed with the same sensation of tension that a convicted criminal waiting for the toll of the bells to indicate their visit to the noose or the chair or the needle. Anna found herself moving though motions her body recognized with muscle memory but she could barely comprehend until evening finally arrived. Putting the children down to bed, Anna turned herself toward the clock and tried to remember the details of the dream that began the odyssey that left her lost in the sea of someone else's life.

But she did not have long to wait. The distant sounds of voices from the fields had her moving from her position in the children's nursey to the backstairs. With no one in the kitchen but the younger house servants bunking in the small room that would become a pantry in a century, Anna pressed out onto the porch to try and find the source of the voices.

Before she could identify a single voice, something grabbed her around the neck and a hand smelling of gun oil and the acrid stench of gunpowder, covered her nose and mouth. Anna struggled but the arm around her throat tightened and she choked with the combination of smells mixing in her nose. A mouth moved to her ear and the malignant whisper chilled her blood with its familiarity.

"I told you that you were mine and always would be."

A surge of adrenaline, mixing with the confusing mash of her memories and those of Ms. Cotton, had Anna bringing her arm back to strike hard into Green's stomach. The sharp exhalation of air rushed past her ear and allowed Anna to adjust her hips enough to bring the heel of her foot down hard on Green's instep. His position shifted, his arms loosening, and Anna bit at the skin of the hand covering her mouth while bringing her freed elbow higher to strike dead center at Green's nose. It cracked under the force and he stumbled back on the wood, losing his hold completely. In that moment, as Anna turned, she did not see Green but the German soldier she had all but forgotten about in the shadows of memories she swore never to revisit. But in that moment, as their images and her memories merged, Anna brought her ankle up hard to strike between Green's legs.

His knees bent, hitting the wood hard to try and stop his forward momentum as both hands were occupied holding his spewing nose and now his aching crotch. Anna used her foot and shoved him over onto his side, leaving him to moan in agony before she sniffed the air. Past the taste of Green still on her tongue, a sensation she wanted to scrub off with a bristle brush, Anna smelled the smoke.

It clogged her nose as she tore through the house. Screams from the children and occupants of the house almost distracted her to the shots and the distant canon fire but Anna ignored them. She even ignored the cracks of gunfire that she now wondered might have found their targets in those running for safety. But the sounds from the second level of the house urged her to take the back stairs, despite her dress tripping her almost tripping her at the top.

Anna cursed the long skirts, grabbing at the bannister for support, before wrenching her skirts out of the way to stop herself tumbling back down the stairs. The echoes of cries in the open hall below spurred Anna onward to try the first door where someone cried in fear on the other side. The lock on the door resisted Anna's rattle of the knob but with a stiff shove of her shoulder, the wood splintered to grant her entrance.

In a second, tumbling to catch herself on her knees, Anna hurried to raise her hands to placate the barrel of the gun in her face. "It's just me, ma'am."

"Thank goodness." The gun lowered. "We feared they'd taken the house."

"They've set fire to it instead." Anna picked herself off the floor, putting her hands over Missus Mary's where they shook on the gun.

"They're burning it?"

"Yes ma'am. We've got to get you and the children out of here." Anna moved to the crib, lowering herself over the edge to retrieve the sleeping child and place him in the other woman's arms as they discarded the gun. "If you'll get Master Reginald then I can get Master Matthew and Miss Sybil."

"Are you sure Anna?"

"I can manage them ma'am." Anna nodded at her. "Take the servants' stairs out the back way and hide in the outbuildlings. They're ignoring them."

Missus Mary held Master Reginald to her chest and darted out the door. Anna turned to the smaller beds and put her hands to the shoulders of the children whimpering in their sleep there. "It's time to wake up."

They blinked blearily at her but Anna helped them to their feet. "Master Matthew on my back and Miss Sybil hold tight to my front if you please."

Holding to her like monkeys, Anna put one arm behind her to settle under Matthew and the other strapping across Sybil's back to keep her tight to her chest, Anna retraced her earlier steps toward the servants' stairs. Cackles of laughter and shots from below had the children crying but over the noise of the fire and the rowdy raiders below, they were inaudible to the attackers. Keeping them tight and hurrying as quickly as the added weight would allow, Anna pushed into the tight stairwell to exit the house.

With the orange glow from the burning house breaking the darkness in foggy billows, Anna hurried toward the outbuildlings. She ignored the soldiers jeering and cheering at the sight while dancing about as if celebrating a victory for some pagan god and hid under their noise to reach the buildings she knew better a hundred years in the future. The distraction was enough so that when a shadow stepped from the blackness she almost screamed, her immediate memory of Green holding her immobile on the porch springing to mind.

But the towering figure rang familiar in her very bones. The size and shape of him merging not unlike the German soldier and Green on the porch. In this case, however, the memories were those of two women madly in love with the two men represented in the shape of Mr. Higgins.

"Mr. Ba- Mr. Higgins, thank heavens you're here."

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine but the children are frightened and Missus Mary is-"

"Safe and about to be away from here as soon as the children get in her carriage with her." John lifted Matthew off Anna's back. "Follow me."

They moved as quietly as they could in the dark, using the overcast shadows from the buildings and the trees to sneak to a path at the far edge of the avenue. A carriage waited there, Missus Mary pacing back and forth in front of it as she rocked Master Reginald in her arms. Her sigh of relief, matching that of Mr. Carson acting her coachman, almost deafened Anna after so long in the silence.

"Come on then," She urged, moving to climb into the rear of the carriage with the children already loaded safely inside, but stopped when she saw Anna and John drawing back. "Aren't you coming?"

"We'd draw too much attention ma'am." Anna motioned for her to take the carriage. "A woman with three children fleeing the battlefield isn't going to bring as much notice as someone looking as if they're making off with the household."

"They'll not be able to hold General Sherman long. They'll take whatever they can find and that means you, Anna, and you, Mr. Higgins, if you both don't get into this carriage right now."

"And you'll need to get away or Mr. Matthew'll always wonder if you made it out safely." Anna waved her off. "Two servants like us won't draw any attention. We'll just be more refuges trundling our way to Atlanta or the like. They'll pass us by like we're nothing and that's how we need it."

"We'll be fine ma'am." John assured her, nodding at Mr. Carson. "Get your little ones to safety."

"Then here." Missus Mary tore something from a wad of notes she tucked into her clothing. "This is my grandmother's address in New Jersey. We'll be headed there. If you manage to make it out, come to New Jersey and find us."

"Go Missus Mary," John pressed as the noises drew closer. "Before they realize you've got yourself away."

Missus Mary climbed toward the driver's seat and Mr. Carson snapped the reins. The one horse there wailed a bit but kicked forward and dragged the carriage with the three half-sleeping but still terrified children away. They watched them go, drawing back into the shadow of a tree, and their hands met as the echoes of shots and shouts grew closer.

"I always wanted to…" Anna stopped herself. "I've seen the north. It's Ms. Cotton who's never seen it."

"I guess that was the other life, where you saw it." John kissed her knuckles, rubbing over them. "This time I can promise that I'll be with you there."

"He promised he'd follow her anywhere." Anna mused a moment, her ears pricking for the moment that already had the skin of her back tingling in anticipation of pain. "And he tried."

"She never told him about their son." John paused, "Perhaps that's what they missed here. The moment we're supposed to correct."

"Maybe." Anna raised her head, to see John's eyes, and then pulled them both sideways a second before the crack of a shot split the night air around them.

A ball buried itself in the tree next to them and Anna pivoted to duck down with John by her side. The phantom ache of pain in her back immediately subsided as the moment faded and fogged. Unlike the choking fog of smoke, the misty tendrils that wrapped them and their surroundings seemed more like those of another world. Of the shadow plane where Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins walked on opposite sides of the glass.

Anna tightened her grip on John's hand and held him close. "I'll not have him separate us. Not here and not ever."

"It's almost sickening how saccharine you both are." They shifted closer to one another as the apparition of Green walked toward them through the mists. "The two of you, and the two of them, just holding to one another as if that could stop death or the forces of the world from ripping you apart."

"I don't feel ripped apart now."

"But soon," Green pointed at them. "Soon I'll have you two as well. I'll trap you here, with them, and you'll wander in an eternity hoping and praying and searching for one another but never-"

Green stopped and Anna frowned at him before glancing at her hands. She let out a tiny shriek that had John looking at her hands and then his own before leaning some of his weight on Anna as his leg wobbled under him. Anna wrapped her arm around his back, holding him up as they watched the spectral forms of Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins separate from their bodies.

The doppelgängers stared at one another for a moment, the shock of the moment overruling the moment that Green's presence threatened to ruin. But as Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins nodded to those who formerly acted as their vessels, they turned to one another. It was as if the world held its breath when their hands reached toward one another. Hands that anna feared would encounter an invisible barrier keeping them separated for the eternity Green threatened.

But their fingers touched and the second they folded to intertwine, Mr. Higgins dragged Ms. Cotton to him. They embraced so tightly Anna wondered if they sought to share a body like they just had with Anna and John. But their grip loosened after a moment and they moved to kiss one another.

The second their lips touched it was as if a bright light overtook everything. Anna squinted and shied her eyes away, avoiding the blinding effects of the overly dramatic kiss. Just as quickly as it began, the kiss ended and Anna blinked when Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins no longer stood there. She huffed and shrugged to John.

"Just like her, to not say thank you."

John almost laughed as well but the moment his fingers tightened his grip on Anna she turned back to their voyeur. The voyeur struggling and begging with someone or something they could not see. Whatever it was did not seem placated by this pleas and promises as a dark force gripped at him. Its tendrils and clawing form wrapped and trapped Green before sucking him unceremoniously down. Down where, Anna could only guess with a shudder, but the moment passed as quickly as Ms. Cotton and Mr. Higgins' departure.

Anna went to say something to John but, just as their arrival, in a second they no longer stood in the mysterious destination but collapsed together on the porch of Downton Place. Her hands spread on the porch, looking up quickly to witness the familiar fire scaring on the building and the blackened marks of the flames. John's hands covered hers and Anna threw herself into his hold, hugging him tightly as if she would never let go.

"It's over Anna." He soothed, drawing his hands down her back. "It's all over now. It's over."

Anna shook her head against his shoulder before pulling back, "Not quite."


	20. Beginning Anew

After the excitement of her first year in Savannah, Anna wondered if life might be become the quiet and idyllic scene that all the quaint stories with southern settings claimed waited for those who ventured to risk the humidity and the heat. Perhaps, with the ghosts no longer plaguing her existence, she considered the chance at finding peace. A chance to turn to other pursuits and pleasures.

But she knew that could not be true.

In the midst of the struggles to rebuild Downton Place, not the least of which were the constant and consistent arguments and debates between Lady Mary and Mr. Ross about building means and appearances, Anna snuck to the underground room for the last time. She found the hideaway, using a hammer to break through the bricks that had tumbled to block the catch and preserve the book Ms. Cotton had forgotten there. It cracked and threatened to scatter but Anna quickly wrapped it carefully in a cloth and gave it to Mr. Ross at the first opportunity.

He, to her surprise, turned it over to Rose Aldridge. Rose, as it happened, had joined the duo of Mr. Ross and Mr. Aldridge for her handling of rare and fine books at the New York Public Library and proved the expert in both deciphering the faded text of Ms. Cotton's lists and recopying the names to make them more legible. She also undertook the daunting task of preserving the book itself, for the museum that would include a glass covering over the underground tunnel so guests could witness its existence without risking injury to explore it. John took over sealing the other end and clearly marking it to make sure it stayed untouched by both unwitting and witting individuals.

Those individuals being the children.

But soon enough the children were no longer at risk of discovering all the house's secrets by whatever potentially dangerous means they might hatch as plans together. Mr. Branson, at the urging of Mr. Talbot, opened a smaller office for their car selling business in Savannah. And with the promise of a plant in the area, business boomed enough to allow Mr. Branson to purchase a house in town. A house where he insisted Miss Sybbie live with him.

Despite the complaints and tears, from all three children, they soon found their saturation of company when they enrolled in Mr. Pelham's school. Anna accompanied them on their first day, greeting her new classroom with as much enthusiasm as the children in the classroom seemed to have at the prospect of a teacher uninitiated in their hazing procedures. They were equally disappointed, surprised, and impressed when Anna proved unfazed by their attempts.

Spending too much time being haunted by ghosts, even those with generous and gentle agendas, had its uses. One among them being her continuing aid to Mr. Ross, who stayed in one of the outbuildlings long after Mr. and Mrs. Aldridge had returned to New York. With the trio of protection Mr. Ross found in John, Mr. Talbot, and Mr. Branson, none of the town dared bother or torment the intrepid researcher on his quest to track down every name in Ms. Cotton's book.

His quest, as it happened, involved visiting many of the local plantations, or what remained of them, and Anna accompanied him with John as escort. They all held a familiar sensation for Anna, a tingling she came to associate with the presence of Ms. Cotton or Mr. Higgins, and it also allowed some of the dead to speak to her. Not through her, as Ms. Cotton used to, but to provide the missing pieces of information in Mr. Ross's growing collection of data he finally complied into a book where he thanked Anna profusely in the acknowledgements and even insisted on paying her part of the proceeds. She tried to refuse but when she saw the check for the first portion, John refused to listen to her attempts to return the money.

Especially with the arrival of their first child. The pregnancy was not uncomplicated by the delivery was fraught with a number of complications. In the months leading up to the event, Anna was forced to bedrest and she endured countless hours bored out of her mind while John waited on her hand and foot. But it all proved worth the time and effort when Doctor Clarkson placed the squalling little bundle in her arms.

She settled, nestling toward Anna with the wisps of hair as blonde as her mother's that John could not stop himself touching. And when she finally opened her eyes, greeting the world with a frustrated curiosity, John's eyes stared back at them. Anna drew a finger down the little girl's face and leaned into John to whisper to him as the nurses and doctors milled about them.

"She's exactly as I saw her."

"What?"

"When you came back, just after I confirmed I was pregnant," Anna cuddled the baby closer when she fidgeted and gave a little cry. "I saw them."

"Them?"

"All of our children." Anna smiled at John, the haze in her vision from tears threatening to match his own. "A little girl, just like her. A boy with your hair and demeanor but my eyes. A little girl who looks like you and is the apple of your eyes. And then, maybe, a little boy who looks like me. Someone to name after you no matter how much you'll object to it."

"Then it's a good thing you've not had him yet." John kissed her forehead and then laid a gentle kiss on his daughter's head. "I still have time to argue."

But not as much time as he thought. Within two years, despite teaching full-time and continuing to help Mr. Ross with a second book, Anna fell pregnant again. Their little brooder with Anna's eyes came into the world quieter than they expected but proved quite the screamer when it came to trying to get him to sleep. The weeks of lost rest were what kept them from trying actively for another child until five years passed.

Five years for Lady Mary and Mr. Ross to settle enough of their differences to finally open Downton Place as New Sun Meadow Museum with Mrs. Hughes as the curator and caretaker of the property. Her wedding to Doctor Clarkson, a quiet affair with those closest to them, took place under the large trees in the garden and had everyone cheering at a respectful volume for the happy occasion. An occasion quickly followed, with a larger guest list, by Lady Edith's marriage to the headmaster of the children's school, Mr. Pelham.

Anna, as a teacher there, had spent the intervening years gossiping to John about the possibility of it, slow as the start seemed. Lady Edith's decision to stay in Savannah, instead of going north to New Jersey after the passing of their grandmother, inspired her to seek an occupation. And, as luck and Mr. Pelham would have it, a position in the administration of his school opened just in time for Lady Edith to lay claim to it. Just before she helped take over the local paper and spruce it up to increase circulation. Anna suspected Mr. Pelham had heavy involvement in it and was not at all surprised when they clapped with the rest at the wedding of the two like-minded souls.

The garden, for the weddings, was kept to a high standard of beauty as the museum's opening allowed for a larger staff. Lady Mary would take no arguments and Mr. Ross insisted with her that John stay on as head gardener. His position expanded and he worked closely with both Lady Mary and Mrs. Hughes in making the garden an extension of the museum. Not just as grounds to host parties and weddings and other such events but as a means of representing a way of life forgotten amongst the interior décor of the house.

All the while the steady and determined attentions of Mr. Talbot finally caught Lady Mary's eye. Anna suspected that the announcement of their engagement and the subsequently swift wedding had more in common than just a desire to share a house and more to do with the impending arrival of a younger sibling for Master George. But, as Anna reminded herself when tempted to broach the subject, those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. She congratulated them and was there to help deliver Lady Mary's second child when the midwife proved a little late and Doctor Clarkson unavailable.

And so it was, almost eight years after Anna's arrival in Savannah, she fell pregnant again. Their oldest expressed the curiosity of a seven-year-old while their youngest cried for two days. When, a few months later, Anna delivered unexpected twins, he calmed slightly at the promise of a younger brother. A brother with hair as golden as his older sister's while the younger sister their oldest wanted had hair like her older brother's. Anna cried the moment she could see all four of her children in the same room together and could not explain to anyone else why the four children surrounding her like the vision she glimpsed so long ago, affected her. So her older children went off to play quietly, John laid the twins to sleep in a shared crib, and then held Anna until she shed all of her happy tears.

Given the expansion of their family, the little cabin they shared for so long proved far too small for the way they burst at the seams. And given John's function as head gardener, Lady Mary and Mr. Ross did not find it odd to offer part of the sealed off sections of the house to them. Mrs. Hughes readily agreed as it would allow for caretakers to be on sight in case of marauding and bored teenagers looking to cause a ruckus. Mostly Anna wondered if it was not just more convenient to have someone living in the house to ensure it stayed tidy and reduce the cost of the cleaning crew who came once a month to dust the edges and crevices.

Whatever the reason, Anna and John accepted the offer. With Lady Mary, Lady Edith, and Mr. Branson all living in town on the same block of road, the house needed someone to look after it. Someone who understood it and cared for it the way those who owned the house did. And, in the minds of all involved, who better than the two chosen to guide the chief ghosts to the afterlife.

That was the thought on Anna's mind as she wandered the house one afternoon. Her classes had been canceled for a battery of testing the state required of the students and Mr. Pelham dismissed her to spend some time relaxing. Time she had used to put her terrible twos twins to bed. But it left her with a potentially free afternoon almost unencumbered by tours. So she wandered the house, marveling at the mixture of Lady Mary's insistence on keeping the house looking like Downton Place and the designs Mr. Ross referenced as being integral to the essence of Sun Meadow. To Anna, having seen both, she could only smile at the perfect meld of ideas and the meeting of two different centuries in a single structure.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Anna turned her head to see Ms. Cotton standing there. "It is."

Ms. Cotton gave a small smile, "I wasn't talking about the house."

"Have you come to express your gratitude. Because if you have, you're about eleven years late." Anna paused, "And you didn't keep your promise about having the rest of your ghostly friends leave me be."

"You've not been hampered by it."

"Perhaps not like with you but still…" Anna let the thought trail off. "Why didn't you stay, to say 'thank you'?"

"We didn't have much of a choice. It was all rather sudden." Ms. Cotton frowned, "What happened to Green?"

"I'll assume the Devil dragged him to Hell but I won't be counting those chickens until I've had my own interview with God." Anna sighed, "Why are you here now? Why wait all this time?"

"I…" Ms. Cotton stopped, her frown deepening. "Did you say it's been eleven years? Since I saw you last it's been eleven years?"

"I've four children to prove it." Anna narrowed her eyes, "How long has it been for you?"

"I don't know. The concept of time is irrelevant there." Ms. Cotton looked over the house, "It is beautiful as well. They did a fine job."

"It's stood for longer because it's not being fought over."

"I'd express my apologies for that but I had no hand in it."

"I'm sure you'd like to believe that's true." Anna paused, "Did Mr. Higgins meet his son? Did you meet his family?"

Ms. Cotton nodded, "We've been meeting relatives from all over. I traced mine back to Africa. The Gold Coast, to be specific."

"That's wonderful."

"It is." Ms. Cotton paused, as if trying to balance her voice. "Knowing where you come from, who loved you before you were even born… It's an irreplaceable feeling I never thought I'd have."

"I'm sure your son feels the same." Anna turned her head at a sound from the ground floor. "I think that's my husband."

"Then I won't keep you." Ms. Cotton extended a hand to Anna. "Thank you. For everything you did for me, willing or otherwise. You… I'm not sure you'll know until we don't need words to express our emotions how I feel and how grateful I am."

Anna reached for Ms. Cotton's hand and they both gave a little laugh when she passed through it. "I think I've some idea now… Willing or otherwise."

"Be well, Anna. You and your children and theirs and however may follow. May you all be well."

"And the same to you."

Anna watched as Ms. Cotton faded from her view, the sensation that she would never see her again settling in her heart with a mixture of relief and sorrow. A sorrow almost immediately lifted when John's arms wrapped around her from behind and he kissed at her neck. "Why are you standing alone in the hall?"

"I wasn't alone." Anna argued, sighing into John's kisses. "I was having a conversation with someone who wanted to say thank you."

"Bit of a delay."

"Apparently time is only for the use of man, not ghosts fully integrated into the Heavenly sphere." Anna turned in John's arms, her hands framing his face. "Do you realize where we are?"

He frowned, "The hall?"

"We're near my old room."

"If I remember, it was a closet."

"It was enough." Anna took John's hands from her waist and, holding them tightly, guided him into the bedroom.

The remodel of the house widened it enough to feature a bed and space for tourists to see the possible sleeping quarters of house servants at Sun Meadow. But Anna used it to step over the rope while John shut the door. Even with the fan above them beating a steady tattoo and the new air conditions pumping through various rooms to the best of its ability, without the flow of air from the open door Anna immediately sensed the sweat beading on her back.

"Your room, or former room, is lovely." John tried to pull her away but Anna led him closer to the bed. "You've got a devious expression right now Mrs. Bates, and I fear for my sanity."

"Then let your sanity rest with the knowledge we've only twenty minutes before a tour comes through and we'll have to address our twins waking from a nap." Anna tugged John to follow her onto the bed as she laid back. "You never did have the chance to seduce me in my room."

"With the house as full as it was and how loud you get?" John needed no further persuasion, guiding his gentle but insistent kisses down her neck while their fingers opened their shirts in leapfrogging patterns from one to the next until they could feel uncovered skin. "It would've been a disaster."

"Or a declaration."

"Leaving your pregnant and the marrying your quickly was declaration enough." John paused, leaning over Anna. "For then."

"Are you going to make a declaration now?"

"I most certainly am."

And John did not stop until Anna screeched three separate climaxes. Then with her legs wrapped over his hips, John joined them and sent the metal frame of the bed rocking and squeaking over the floor. They giggled together, between gasps for breath, as they tried to hurry so as not to disturb the room irreparably before the tours came through. And when John brought Anna with him to the edge, their fingers tangling like their tongues in their kiss, Anna surrendered with him.

Their position and location gave them little time to bask in their situation but Anna held John tightly for a moment before releasing him. He ran his fingers over her face, smiling at her as they tried to situate themselves enough for a dash back to their rooms. A dash they made more like a three-legged race as John's leg spasmed. But they made it behind their door before the tour guide reached the stairs.

"So, Mrs. Bates," John took his turn to guide her toward their bathroom, "Was it everything you imagined?"

"Better." Anna teased, moving as if to leave her clothes on the floor. "You are far better at all of this now that-"

A soft cry from the other room stopped them and Anna gave a little groan before organizing her clothes to go and tend to their children. John's hand on hers stopped Anna and she frowned in confusion before John kissed it away. "Let me."

"But your leg-"

"Will be fine." He assured her, nodding toward the bath. "Just run one of those and I might join you."

"You might?"

"I will."

Anna held his hands, bringing them to her mouth to kiss his knuckles. "Because you'll always come with me?"

"However, whatever, whenever." John kissed her back. "Always."

"Then you'd better see to them quickly or I might not wait for you."

John's nostrils flared, "Promise?"

"Guaranteed." Anna waved him off, "Go on."

"I love you." John kissed her quickly and vanished to the twins' room as Anna stayed standing where she was, her fingers touching over her lips.

"And I love you."


End file.
